The Center for Neighborhood Technology has a cool new tool letting you look up different areas and check not only hosue costs, but also average transportation costs. The insight here is that lots of folks see they can get a house for $50,000 cheaper in a suburbs and immediately consider that a terrific deal. What they don't add in is cost of gas, car insurance, cars, etc. Housing, to be sure, is the biggest ticket item for most families. But transportation costs tend to rank second, eating anything from 10 percent of income in areas rich with public transit to 25 percent in areas with fewer public options. Nationally, the average family spend 19 percent of their income on transport. So the question of housing affordability really has to take into account transportation, too. In order to do so, the CNT creates a Housing + Transportation affordability index (the two should come to no more than 48 percent of income) and lets folks poke around the country with their mapping tools. Fun stuff. For those who want to dig even deeper, there's an explanation of the methodology here.
