How much do you need to make to buy a home in the DC Metro Area?

The Washington Post had an interesting article yesterday about how much it costs to live in major metropolitan areas in the US.  The WaPo article is here.  The study the article was drawing on is here. 

The study, by HSH.com calculated how much salary it would take to afford "the base cost of owning" a median priced home in 25 metro areas in the US (see the link above for a more detailed description of HSH's methdology).

The DC metro area's median home price $368,000.  To afford a house at that price you need to make at least $62,809.63.  DC came in at 6th on the list.  

The top three salary thresholds were all in California--San Francisco at $115,510.06, San Diego at $81,570.40, and Los Angeles at $72,126.90.  

The lowest salary threshold was for Cleveland at $19,435.17.  Nearby Baltimore came in at $41,155.40.  

I have to confess that I was surprised that the DC metro area wasn't higher on the list.  I also thought the median house price was low.  The figures are correct, but it turns out my experience living in the District (during a time of rapid gentrification) and recently moving to South Four Corners in Silver Spring colored my assumption about home prices.  

My old zip code in DC (20016) had a median sales price in 2013--$955,263--that was well over the metro area's median house price.  And, all but one of MoCo's 10 inside the beltway zip codes had median sales prices above it as well (four had prices more than twice as a large).  An interactive graphic with median home prices for 2013 by zip code can be found here.   

In short, if you buy a house in Montgomery county at the median metro value, you are probably going to be doing so outside the beltway. 

Zip Code	Median Sales Price 2013
20812	$624,750
20814	$790,000
20815	$946,000
20816	$880,500
20817	$838,750
20818	$751,500
20901	$410,000
20910	$519,500
20903	$302,500
20912	$440,000