Ten Reasons to Buy a Home: Houses Are Cheap

Enough with the doom and gloom about homeownership. Brett Arends in the WSJ presents  10 reasons why it's a good time to buy a home.  Reason #1 is that you can get a great deal and Reason #2 is that mortgages are cheap.  In other words, relative to income levels, housing affordability remains at historically high levels (see chart above).  In July, a potential home buyer with the median family income of $60,498 had about 161% of the qualifying income necessary ($37,392) to qualify for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage at 4.9% and purchase the median priced existing single-family home at $183,400, with a 20% down payment.  Monthly payments for that hypothetical home would be only $779 (principal and interest), see details here.