Which areas would you say income vs prices have faired better than others?

What neighborhoods do you think are prime for an up tick?

What has happened to rents during this time? I would be curious to know by location.

$1300 mortgage seems OK to me (our income is slightly above average though), but in a good school district $247,000 barely buys you a small condo... Also I bet $1300 includes 20% downpayment - not everyone has 50K + closing costs in a savings account.

Last year I did a ballpark estimate on what we would pay monthly (mortgage, property taxes, HOA, front foot and other fees) for a $350K townhome with 5% downpayment. The total came to astonishing 2500$ per month. Our rent is 1300$ a month - no risks, no maintenance, no headaches. So we're staying put.

Jelena, I'm so glad you mentioned down payment -- it slipped my mind totally to note that the mortgage payments are calculated for loans with a 10 percent down payment. Thanks!

Christian, I wish I knew what happened to rents at a micro-location, but so far I haven't seen real estate information providers who have it below a large scale level (i.e. county or metro area). Has anyone seen smaller-level rent statistics?

And to answer your other question, Christian, income vs. prices by area depends. That is, do you calculate income of people living in the city vs. the prices in the city, or do you calculate income of people living in the metro area or the entire state vs. city prices? Either way produces a reasonable answer, but it's all about what answer you're really interested in. I'll probably add one or the other to my to-do queue for number crunching.

You have made me out to be the devil. I am now Googled as the worst Realtor in town - all due to you... Thank you!

You don't live in the City and never have. Your appeal is somewhere else... You like the 'burbs and I don't.

I like the city. It has realness, culture that perhaps you don't understand.

I have been pissy to congress, local council, and try to do my part. However, you don't seem to understand or your readers...I get it you all dis-like me.

Don't try to quell a voice that can make a difference.

For Pete's sake, Christian, I've done nothing but approve your comments and occasionally respond when you attribute opinions to me that I don't have or actions that I have not taken. For instance, that I'm trying to quell your voice. I'm not and never have. You can continue commenting here as long as you want to.

This is ultimately why you creep me out. This is data I can find in seconds. Why can't you?

I understand you are die-hard suburban lover, but why can't you easily find this data? You do work for BALTIMORE SUN after all?

Local understanding of the markets takes seconds (literally). It is not THAT hard!

You take more time to prove your point. Why?

Er -- what data? Rental statistics? If you're talking about your access to the MLS, remember that it's restricted to agents and the like.

But if you've found a good source of freely available rental stats, I'm all ears -- please share.

You scare me like no other! I wake up with nightmares of you. Your comments have hurt Baltimore City like no-other.

Please, walk the streets. I understand that Columbia, doesn't give us credit. But why do you DIS us? We aren't all horrible.

I feel like I'm hitting my head against the wall, but here goes again: I have no idea why you think I'm dissing the city, Christian. Unless you see insult in my focus on the metro area as a whole, but remember that the city is a big part of the metro area.

Does anybody actually live in the city? Is BALTIIMORE SUN only suburban fodder? Do you all think we are just scum?

Jamie... well done compilation. It's scary but it does seem to fit with my own observations here and is in line with similar info from other parts of the country.

As to this Dunn/Christian person... if you can't be civil please be elsewhere. Thanks.

This is incredibly bizarre. What the heck are you two sparring about?

OMG... I can provide better info in an instant.

Why should I tell the ultimate detractor? You have hurt this town worse than every other single media source. You love the 'burbs!

You have got to be kidding me!?

I get it...

Why does this blog cast such a negative light on the City?

You are the subject of my nightmares. You don't do well or seemingly care.

Why shouldn't B'more have someone on its side?

It is true your Overtly negative opions trouble me every night and day. They aren't right.

It is all fun and games at this level... But when has anyone from your blog been prompted to make a difference? NEVER!

I bet you are for Dixon's court costs and 5% raises for staff too. Thanks a million $. Given yor damage to the ity thanks for $500 million!

As for rents Christian, as a realtor you should know of all the zombie multifamily properties in Baltimore City that went up during the bubble are screwed. The new places in Harbor East, Downtown, and on the Westside were all built with crazy pro forma projections that assumed that house prices would keep going up and up forever.
Well these places now have to give 3 months free to attract anyone and even they they are not even close to 50% full. Now that massive layoffs have occured in the higher paying jobs downtown many of these people are moving back to the county with mom and dad.

As for Canton and Federal Hill the days of getting $2000 for a shotty rehab are gone for a decade. The amount of phantom inventory that will come on this spring will drive down home prices and will drive down rents as such. This whole thing was not substainable. Your 2006 325k rowhome will drop to 185k. That's where it needs to be to make sense from an income standpoint.

My coworker just got a nicer place with parking for 300 bucks less than he paid for rent in 2006. With the worst job market for younger folks in decades don't expect to get the Towson grads moving down and bunking up 4 to a rowhome anymore. The jobs do not exist and the pipeline is broken.

As for your thinking that Jamie is dumping on the city, face the facts, it's not a great place to raise a child. That's the #1 thing that effects property values. It's a fun place when your young to go out and stumble home from the bar. Buying a home was a committment that forever was something you did to stay for a decade or more. We got away from that for about 5 years and it will take another 5-10 years to even out.

The prices are nutz even in the family oriented neighborhoods like Hamilton, Lauraville that can not afford to send kids to private school. Let's be honest why would someone pay 2X in taxes for less services and shotty schools. It's only because they are stuck or some Realtor scammed them.

Since your Realtor gig is not working out, how about you go into another profession like teaching in Baltimore City. Maybe you can make a difference that would convince folks like me to give the city a try. The city will never attract a critical mass till this issue is fixed.

@wayne re: "This is incredibly bizarre. What the heck are you two sparring about?"

I wish I knew.

Jamie - keep up the good work. As so many realtors continually attempt to spin in a futile effort to prevent a very necessary market correction (take a look at the NAR's affordability index, which laughably uses "median family income" instead of "median household income"), it's good to know that there are objective voices out there willing to speak the truth about the local real estate market.

It's true that, typically, most real estate markets exhibit a ratio of 3 time median house price to median household income. Baltimore, however, traditionally had a ratio below that mark for a variety of reasons. Once we get to "3", we begin to see greater affordability, but ultimately it is supply and demand which govern prices.

If I were a gambling man, I'd wager to mark the bottom at 2.5. How long that process will take is anyone's guess.

I think you are "Mean Girl" the City is filled with dweebs, dorks and burn-outs...

A quick back-of-the-envelope analysis shows that to get to a 3.0 home price to median household income ratio, the median price needs to decline another $43,000 or 17.4%.

To get to Baltimore's historical 2.5 ratio, the median price needs to decline $77,000 or 31.2%.

If prices were to overshoot the 3.0 number as far on the downside as they did on the upside, the ratio would have to come down to 1.9. To get to a 1.9 price to income ratio, the median price would have to fall a whopping $117,800 or 47.7%.

All of these declines would be on top of the declines we've already experienced to get to a median price of $247,000.

This tells me that houses in the Baltimore area remain extremely overvalued and that prices have a minimum of 15-20% more to fall before this is over.

Thank you for your analysis. Looks like we're a long way from being out of the woods.

Anyone have thoughts on this analysis?

sure here's a thought:

Add into the mix the net decline in median income we're likely to have over the next year through layoffs, and reductions, etc and your (well done) analysis is even more er depressing.

Christian,
I will put it in perspective. Baltimore is a city of fat dumb slobs, so prices will be "right" when they drop to the fat slob level.

Baltimore is NOT D.C.

Thank you for not comparing us to DC. Agreed. I lived there for years, it sucks!

I don't know much about Baltimore, but having studied the generic lending practices for home mortgages in the US, UK and Canada, I can say that banks in all these countries will lend a maximum (give or take) of three times your annual income. So that means if you earn 60,000 USD per year (gross), the most they'll give you is 180,000. You are now expected (as we know) to have at least 20-25% of your own cash (the way it always should have been! Straying from that is part of the problem we now face). So an avergae semi-professional (lower middle class majority) single earner should be looking at a home of no more than 220,000 USD. Baltimore, Tacoma, Hollywood, Fla, Nashville - wherever. That's it. And until the prices come back down to affordability - no one can buy, and the banks certainly won't lend. So there is still a major price correction required. To have the Government cushioning the idiots who bought places far too expensive is a bad, bad, idea as it just keeps the prices of their homes articificially too high while you and I the taxpayers subsidize their payments, meantime we still can't afford to buy anything for ourselves!

I would like to respond to Adam ("As for your thinking that Jamie is dumping on the city, face the facts, it's not a great place to raise a child.) My argument is that I do not understand why people think you can't raise a family in a city but need suburbia to do this.

At one time, this was a real community of hardworking immigrants raising children. I grew up in Canton when it was all blue-collar. Yes, there was crime etc., as there always be, that's a fact. However, I have fond memories of the Catholic school I attended, Sunday church services, festivals, food markets,and the community swimming pool.I remember when GOD was still important in our lives and the older ladies that walked faithfully to church on the weekdays to attend St. Casimer's church services. There were 2 main grocery stores that my mother could easily walk to every week. Neither of my parent drove cars. My Dad used to take us to Patterson Park in the evenings after working a demanding physical job at Sparrows Point (car pooled) and on Sundays to watch the soccer games. We played at the swings and ran around instead of sitting in front of a video game for hours. We played hopscotch, rode bikes, and roller skated. This was once a great city/place to raise children and a fun place to live. Parents did not need to drive a long way to work, keep their children secluded, and drive to malls, Yes, I long for the old days when this city was not just stomping grounds for young drunks and people who love their dogs and cats more than the idea of raising children.