A really cool, FREE GIVE-A-WAY starts tomorrow--The economy, housing market, job market. Where exactly is that market store where you can find a job?

I look forward to everyone's projects.

Be sure and come by tomorrow because I have a FREE GIVE-A-Way starting tomorrow, that you won't want to miss out on.

Then Wed is the Celebrate the Holidays party and on Friday I will start having the home tour.

I forgot to add one of the names to the poll but someone had already voted and I couldn't add it. It was "Welcome to the Neighborhood". Mark your calendars to come by each day.

Thank you so much Michelle from Someday Crafts for the mention and link. Whenever someone mentions me and does a link to my blog I want to repay them by mentioning them and doing a link back to their blog. I LOVE being linked up. If you want to link one of my posts on your blog, go right ahead. It will tickle me pink. Be sure and let me know and I will link back and mention you as well. Thanks so much Michelle. I look forward to getting to know you better.

I did get through all of my followers and changed my pictures etc again. If my pictures is in silhouette with my name. 1 of 2 things, it has switched back or I can't get to you to fix it-e-mail me.

All of this talk about the economy in despair and jobs at an all time low...not what I want to hear when my hubby is about to be putting resumes out, but my faith is not in our government. That doesn't mean I am anti-government and I am not going to even get into politics on my blog. I love our country but we are going through a rough time right now.

It got me thinking about the housing prices dropping all over the country and what does your $ buy these days?

I wanted to check out housing prices to income ratio, what the average income is listed as, the average rates on home loans and what you could buy and still be in the "proper" ratio. calculated risk blog is one source I looked into as well as yahoo answers, government census, home loan basics, and wikipedia. Then I used realtor dot com as my housing price source.

The average income has gone up to $50,233 a year from $49,568 the previous year and while that sounds encouraging, has the average income really gone up? I think not. I think this dollar amount going up is due more to the fact that there are fewer people working and a lot of lower income people have lost jobs and the difference is only $665.

How does this info from Calculated Risk make you feel: Using national median income and house prices provides a gross overview of price-to-income (it would be better to do this analysis on a local area). However this does shows that the price-to-income is still too high, and that this ratio needs to fall another 15% or so. The further decline in this ratio could be a combination of falling house prices and/or rising nominal incomes (Note: this uses nominal incomes, and even if real incomes are stagnant or declining, nominal incomes usually are rising).

Last quarter this index was over 1.25. Now it is close to 1.2. At this pace the index will hit 1.0 in Q3 2009. However, during a recession, nominal household median incomes are usually stagnate - so it might take even longer.

I determined, (based on several sites) that a conservative rate would be 5.2% with a 30 year fixed rate. I only did a 5% down payment. Some families, once they get back to work, may take a while just to save the 5% and so that is why I chose that number. I have no idea if anyone will do a loan at that. Everything has changed so much in the last few years.


There are several different ways different sites use to calculate how much you can afford without having your exact numbers in front of them. A lender will look at your debt to income ratio.

One thing to keep in mind is that lenders will tell you the maximum you can afford, that does not take in to account all of the extra expenses that arise with home ownership or money you may need to spend on fix up or even changing paint colors or an appliance going out...Some people think you should look at between 80% and 95% of the amount the lender is willing to loan you. What a different way of thinking, that is, compared to all of those people, a few years ago, buying homes, with loans for more than the home was even valued at during that time.



So based on an income of $50,233 (and several price calculations later) I decided on $168,000 with 5% down and a 5.2% rate. I used mortgage calculator and liked that they included a tax % and PMI into the price. The loan amount would be $159,600 with 5% down, making the payments

$1,109 monthly or $938 bi monthly

both of these numbers keep you between the 80%-95%

I looked at houses between $155,000 and $175,000, knowing an offer would be lower than the asking price. I don't know which area is nicer but I tried to go with what looked like the best deal for the nicest home, newest home or most square footage. So what can you get in different parts of the country for @ $168,000?

Franklin Park, NJ 2 bed 2 bath town house

Pitsburgh PA 6 bed 3 bath home

Bloomfield, MICH home

Raleign, NC 4 bed 2 1/2 bath home

Jacksonville, Fl 5 bed 3 bath home

Indianapolis 4 bed 21/2 bath home

McKinney TX 4 bed 2 1/2 bath home

Boise ID 5 bed 2 1/2 Bath home

Fargo ND 3 bed 2 bath home

Reno NV 5 bed 3 bath home

Knoxville, TN 4 bed 2 1/2 bath home

Birmingham, AL 2 bed, 2 bath home

Prescott, AZ 5 bed 3 bath home

Boston, MA 3 bed 2 bath condo

Lees Summit MO 4 bed 3 bath

San Diego CA 3 bed 1 !/2 bath

Honolulu HA 0 bed 1 bath 410 sq ft




Sal3m Or 3 bed 2 bath


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