The cost of buying a home in America was inching up all the time until Covid hit in 2020, but one analyst says prices really shot up during the pandemic and have never come down -- but if you're in Texas, you're doing better than most places in the nation.
The big price hikes have distorted the markets enough that it's now clear you have make "good money" just to afford to buy a home, generally speaking, though there are always bargains if you look hard enough.
A Bankrate survey said recently that the average Texan needs to make about $106,000 per year in order to afford a house purchase, verging on double the average Texan's salary of about $57,000 a year.
That of course means you need to have an average of two incomes just to pay the mortgage (or rent, for that matter).
Bankrate analyst Jeff Ostrowski says the market is difficult, especially for people who want to be first-time buyers.
"Ten, fifteen, 20 years ago it was pretty typical of Americans to buy their home in their mid-to-late 20s, early 30s, but that's all changed.
"Now the average age of homebuyers is 38."
But homebuying in Texas is easier than about half or more of the other states, and prices are cheaper too, overall.
"Texas has always been a state that's comparatively easy to build in. Certainly there are fewer regulations on building than a lot of the other coastal markets.," Ostrowski says.
And that means that the cost of buying a house didn't rise as steeply during the past five years as it did in other states
"Houston's at 25th overall [in the survey] and that's just because home prices in the state haven't shot up like they have in California, Washington or Florida."