When we bought this house it was about 3x income but interest rates were stupid low so with 20% down and paying cash for closing costs the payment was only 20% of income.

Now this house would sell for at least 6x our income and thats with about a 30% increase in income. Add on the higher interest rate and if we bought today our mortgage would be close to 50% of the new higher income. That's assuming we could come up with about 70k more to close than we did when we bought, if not add some PMI and we get a payment well over 50% of our income (aka. no mortgage since no company is loaning a +50% debt to income loan)

Yes I am in one of the 25 cities in the article.

Couple of things that support the insane price growth. RE here is still only middle/high middle so we get people moving from NY/CA etc who have tons of equity to throw at property. Also those same people are making 2-3x the "average" income in the area. So lots of people moving in who can afford it but at the cost to a lot of people who live here who have gone from a low middle/middle COLA to a middle/high middle COLA without changing location. Heck our property taxes an insurance are now equal to my mortgage payment so not even sure how long I'll last here.

We are looking at a few places an hour out of town where we could move and have no house payment but I worry how long before high property values chase out even an hour away.

#13

Fortunately we are in the moving down stage of life but even so we are looking at 60-90 min away.

I should also add that the value is the land so even if we wanted to down size the house a smaller house in the same area will cost the same as ours, assuming I could grab one before a developer does and tears down the house to put up a McMansion for 12x our income.