Here's how much you need to make to afford a home in Salinas

If you want to purchase a home in Salinas, you may want to start saving.

Or, find a new job.

In order to afford a single-family home in the city, your median income would need to be almost $109,000.

The problem is, the median income in Salinas is $52,300, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Here's the math.

To determine how much your annual salary would need to be to afford a house, assume a fixed interest rate of 5 percent. Then, you'll need a 20 percent down payment in order to avoid paying private mortgage insurance.   

Plan on shelling out almost $100,000 just to secure a loan. 

Under those terms, a 30-year mortgage for an average home in Salinas, which real-estate website Trulia values at about $480,000, would cost $24,736 in mortgage payments alone each year, according to Citibank's mortgage calculator.   

But those figures don't include annual property taxes, fees or homeowner's insurance. 

Add about 1 percent for those.

Rabobank's mortgage calculator pushes the typical monthly mortgage payment up to around $2,576 a month, including taxes and insurance. Bank of America's calculator estimates monthly payments at $2,547.67 with a credit score of 740 and 4.5 percent interest rate.

First-time homebuyers may catch a break on the down payment, but because of programs aimed at lowering down payments, their payments will skyrocket to more than $3,200 a month. 

In order to be approved, however, a mortgage payment shouldn't be more than 30 percent of a person's income.

In Salinas, that's $101,880 — about $49 an hour for a full-time, 40-hour work week. 

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, workers in Salinas made an average of $23.22 an hour as of May 2017. That is 5 percent below the nationwide average of $24.34.

The current median sales price in Salinas of $480,000 has increased from $440,000 since January, according to Trulia. It's even higher using real estate website Zillow, which lists median home prices in Salinas at more than $540,000.

Zillow estimates a nearly 10 percent spike in home prices in the last year — comparable to going out and paying cash for a Tesla Model 3.

Additionally, to rent in Salinas, a resident should plan on an average rent of $2,625 per month, according to Trulia.

If you have $100,000 laying around, it would be cheaper to own a home. 

The typical Salinas renter earns $15.86 an hour, less than the hourly wage needed to afford a modest two-bedroom unit at an average price, according to the California Coalition of Rural Housing.

California residents need to earn an average of $32.68 an hour in order to afford a two-bedroom apartment as of 2018, the coalition reports.

Salinas is currently halfway through its decade-long plan to bring affordable housing developments to Salinas.

However, only 11 percent of this goal has been achieved, with 235 housing units have been built out of the city's 2023 goal of 2,229 homes, said Matt Huerta, housing program manager with the Monterey Bay Economic Partnership.

Salinas is moving forward with several projects, including a 180-unit development in Chinatown with about half of the units for those with low incomes and the homeless with serious medical conditions, said City Manager Ray Corpuz Jr. 

Average by the numbers:

Carmel:

Home: $1.4 million

Rent: $4,500

Del Rey Oaks:

Home:$635,000

Rent:$2,700

Marina:

Home: $575,000

Rent: $2,975

Monterey:

Home: $820,000

Rent: $2,900

Salinas: 

Home: $480,000

Rent: $2,625

- Information sourced from Trulia