San Francisco
De Agostini via Getty Images
New York may have topped the national sales price record this year, but it’s still rivaled by San Francisco for the title of most expensive city to live in.
According to a new study from the listings site PropertyClub, it would take longer to save up for a cash purchase of a studio or one-bedroom in San Francisco than in any other city in the country. New York, however, didn’t make its top 10 list.
By saving 30% per month of the median national income (which the Social Security Administration reported as $50,322) it would take 56 years to save a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco, which averages for $883,700, according to Zillow data cited by PropertyClub.
Saving for a single-family house would take even longer. The average price for a one-family in San Francisco was $1,440,900 on Zillow on a recent day when PropertyClub wrote its report, meaning it would take 81 years of saving 30% of the national median income to afford the full price. Buyers can instead take out a mortgage, for which they’d need to earn more than $300,000 per year for monthly payments that cost less than 30% of their income, PropertyClub calculated.
By comparison, it would take 14 years to save for an all-cash purchase of the average-priced one bedroom in New York ( $242,700, according to Zillow).
Who else highest on PropertyClub’s list? They’re mostly in California and other West Coast states.
Here are their top 10 cities where it saving for a cash purchase of a one-bedroom would take the most years: San Francisco (56); Boston (32); San Jose (32); Oakland (31); Los Angeles (30); Washington, D.C. (25); Irvine (25); Portland (24); Seattle (24); Anaheim (22).
PropertyClub’s study comes shortly after third quarter reports from major brokerages around the country, which also show San Francisco having higher sales prices than New York. For example, Sotheby’s International Realty found that the median price for a one-family home in San Francisco hit $1.58 million. In New York, the median sales price recorded by Douglas Elliman was $1.025 million.
But New York still has an edge: It broke U.S. sales records this year when Ken Griffin payed a whopping $238 million for a penthouse in Robert A.M. Stern’s 220 Central Park South, the top price in the country’s history. The most expensive sales price ever in San Francisco was $39 million for 2920 Broadway in Pacific Heights.