Biggerlifestyles (2024)

FAQs

How does anyone afford a house in LA? ›

According to the Redfin study, the income needed to buy a median-priced home in L.A. has soared by 40.7% in one year. In 2021, anyone looking to buy a home in the city of Angels needed to make $157,000 a year. However, now, that same person would need to make $64,000 more, or $221,000, to buy a median-priced home.

Overall, SmartAsset found that to live comfortably in any major city, you need to make about $96,500 annually, up immensely from the nearly $68,500 it estimated last year. A family of four would need to make much more at $235,000 to avoid living paycheck to paycheck.

According to the study, a Los Angeles resident without children would need to make $76,710 after taxes to live comfortably.

A $200,000 a year salary is downright middle class if you're living in a big city like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, Boston, Washington D.C., or San Diego.

No, not really. But, you would be fine if you shared an apt with one or two others.

Los Angeles did not make the top ten, ranking #17. Here, a single person needs $110,781 annually or $53.26 in hourly wages to be comfortable, according to the data. For a family of two working adults with two children, a salary of $276,557 is needed.

Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated. If you are a single person in Los Angeles making around $70,000 a year, you are still considered low-income, according to a new statewide study.

The national median for living comfortably alone is $89,461, which suggests that a 50/30/20 budget might not be practical for most single people.

What is the cheapest state to live in? ›

The most affordable U.S. state overall is Utah, in which the cost of living makes up 63.3% of average residents' income. Coming in second place is Tennessee, in which the cost of living makes up 63.7% of average income. Meanwhile, Arizona comes in third place, with cost of living making up 64.1% of average income.

An individual needs $96,500, on average, to live comfortably in a major U.S. city.

The real estate trade association determined that local households needed to earn at least $192,800 per year in order to afford L.A. County's 2022 median home price of $849,410. Those figures assumed buyers had enough money on hand for a 20% down payment.

As a rule of thumb, a good salary in Los Angeles is between $100k and $200k gross per year. Based on the cost of living in Los Angeles, this should come down to a minimum of $76,710 yearly after taxes.

When analyzing LA, the study said that the annual take-home pay from $100,000 after taxes is $68,050, but the cost of living is 52.5% higher than the national average. "To calculate the city's adjusted annual take-home pay, we divided the city's average after-tax income by 1.525.

Home equity loans

A home equity loan and a home equity line of credit (HELOC) may help current homeowners pay for a mortgage on a million-dollar house. These financing tools work by leveraging the equity of your primary residence as a means of financing when buying a second home.