King County Middle Income Home Buyers News. Ling County WA MLS

The Housing Squeeze: Only nine areas in King County left for middle-income buyers

Restaurant manager Jason Cheung and his archaeologist wife, Amber Earley, were in for a shock last year. Longtime renters in North Seattle's Ravenna and Northgate neighborhoods, they found that having two good jobs wasn't enough to buy them a house in those areas.

In fact, with the King County median house price rising 16.3 percent last year, it seemed this middle-class couple's chances of owning a single-family house anywhere in Seattle were slipping away.

Throughout the county, buyers earning solidly middle-class wages have been increasingly unable to find what are traditionally thought of as middle-class houses because escalating prices mean the pool has been shrinking dramatically.

King County's median household income in 2003 was $57,857, which allowed buyers easy accessibility to 28 areas — seven within Seattle city limits — whose median home prices were $256,000 or less, a Seattle Times home-price analysis showed. Median means half are more; half are less.

Fast forward to last year: House prices shot up, but incomes barely rose, so median-income buyers found even fewer neighborhoods where they could afford the median-priced home — just nine in the county, including one in the city.

Specifically, the only area in Seattle where median-income folks could afford the median-priced house was the residential/industrial/commercial swath south of downtown that includes Georgetown and South Park. That's where Cheung and Earley snagged a well-kept, three-bedroom house in their price range — under $250,000.

Source:By Elizabeth Rhodes and Justin Mayo Seattle Times staff reporters