This thread got me curious about the KC housing market and comparing it to my housing purchases and what I was making at the time.
My theory was leaning a LITTLE towards "damn kids, stop spending money on all your shiny gadgets and wanting a 4 bedroom house, and get a real job!
" despite knowing all the stats and so forth.
I bought my first house when I was in a pretty entry level IT job at $50k/year and it was a 15 year loan and the mortgage payment was only like $750/month (and that wasn't THAT long ago).
So, I bumped that up to $60k/year and went searching for a house that would fit a mortgage payment of no more than 28% of monthly gross income (and no down payment).... and one of the first (and few) houses that wasn't in the worst neighborhoods in the city was completely gutted and another one was 500 sqft.
Bumping it up to $70k/year (a ~$1600 mortgage payment on a $190k loan (yikes, interest rates ****ing suck!)) yielded more results and I'd say would be the minimum annual income for a starter home... and that's maxing out your mortgage/income ratio.
That does suck.... granted, I've also heard from people making 6 figures or a combined income that's in the ~$80-100k range saying they can't ever afford anything, which leads to my initial theory.