Homes 'Earn' Minimum Wage or More in Almost Half the Nation's Largest Cities
Home values in San Jose, Calif., San Francisco and Seattle have been appreciating more than 3.5 times faster per working hour than the cities' minimum wage workers earn.
In San Jose, the typical homeowner is gaining $99.81 of equity in their home every hour they're at the office. The city's hourly minimum wage is $13.50.
The typical U.S. homeowner is gaining $7.09 of equity in their home every working hour, $0.16 less than federal minimum wage.
The rapid pace of home value appreciation over the past year may present homeowners in several large U.S. markets with an interesting dilemma: Why work a 9-5 slog, when you can sit back and collect substantial hourly home equity "earnings" instead?
The typical U.S. home appreciated 7.6 percent over the past year, from a median value of $195,400 in February 2017 to $210,200 at the end of February 2018. That $14,800 bump in value translates to a gain in home equity of $7.09 for every hour the typical U.S. homeowner was at the office last year (assuming a standard 40-hour work week),[1] a shade less than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.
Overall, owners of the median-valued home in 24 of the nation's 50 largest cities earned more in equity per hour over the past year than their local minimum wage.[2] But homeowners in a handful of U.S. cities made out a lot better than that – in some cases much, much better.
The median U.S. household earned roughly $60,000 in 2017 ($58,978 to be exact),[3] or a little more than $28 per hour. But in six U.S. cities – New York, San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, Seattle and Oakland – owners of the median-valued local home gained more than that in home equity alone. And if earning a six-figure annual salary represents a certain amount of privilege, homeowners in San Francisco, San Jose and Seattle all made comfortably more than that simply by virtue of owning a local home.
In San Jose, the heart of Silicon Valley where the median home value has soared above $1 million over the past year, owners of the typical local home earned more than $200,000 in equity last year – almost $100 for every hour spent at the office last year. Even considering the legendary perks of Silicon Valley's office culture, that kind of "income" is probably more than enough to make some local homeowners consider a new twist on "working from home" – ie, giving it up and letting their home do the work instead.
A home is often a person's biggest financial investment, and according to the 2017 Zillow Group Consumer Housing Trends Report, the typical American homeowner has 40 percent of their wealth tied up in their home. A recent Zillow survey found that 70 percent of Americans[4] view their home as a positive long-term investment.
What’s the Catch?
But if the idea of giving up the cubicle life in favor of living off the fruits of your home's appreciation sounds too good to be true, that's largely because it is. There's always a catch, and these kind of earnings come with a big one.
Equity earnings are a lot different than the salary typically taken home on the first and fifteenth of each month; it is not money that accumulates directly into a checking account or that can be spent on daily needs. Equity is only available once a homeowner chooses to sell a home, and even then is often subject to various taxes and other expenses. In other words, in order to capitalize on these gains, a homeowner would need to sell their home – the very goose that's laying these golden eggs for them in the first place.
Still, particularly for homeowners that have already or are very close to paying off a mortgage, this supplemental "income" – especially if allowed to accumulate over several years – can essentially serve as a kind of second job that pays directly to a homeowner's bottom line.
And it can come without nearly as much actual work involved in collecting it.
[1] Assuming an eight-hour work day. This equates to 2,087 working hours in a year, on average, according to OPM.GOV
[2] Hourly minimum wage data by city is from paywizard.org
[3] Household income data is calculated based on data from the American Community Survey, 2016, chained forward to 2017 using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Employment Cost Index.
[4] According to the September 2017 Zillow Housing Aspirations Report, 70 percent of respondents said owning a home is either an excellent or good long-term investment.
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