The math isn’t mathing. Hopeful homebuyers earnings just aren’t adding up to the cost of housing—leaving people desperate to break into the market. You don't expect to hear that from a central banker, though. Cue Tom Barkin, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, who gave a speech on Wednesday at the 2023 Virginia Governor’s Housing Conference. The obvious problem with the housing market, he said, is that it's “becoming increasingly unattainable for too many workers.”
“Take teachers, for example,” Barkin said. “The math all too often just doesn’t work for them.” Here are his sums: Middle school teachers in 2022 made a median salary of just over $60,000, Barkin said, which means that they could afford a $228,000 house, assuming a traditional 20% down payment. The problem, though, is that the median price for a starter home last year was $299,000—“And that’s on the off chance you could even find one.”
