Pressure on Decentralized Markets

The Bay Area and Southern California are two of the highest priced rental markets in the country, and renters need to make 4-5 times the minimum wage to pay their rent. In the future, non-metropolitan markets may expect to see more housing development and population growth because land is cheaper to build on. First-time buyers have an increasingly difficult time breaking into the local market. The line drawn for percent of income spent on housing used to be 25%--it now reaches into 30-50% of the homeowner's income. See the State of the Nation's Housing 2005 from Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies for more.