San Francisco has the worst housing affordability of any major US city. Even Google engineers earning $175K can only afford 18% of local homes. Teachers and nurses are effectively priced out.
At today's 6.7% mortgage rate with 20% down, the monthly PITI on San Francisco's median home is $7,744. To keep housing under 36% of gross income (the back-end DTI threshold most lenders use), you need $278,000/year — 242% of the city's median income.
The local median income of $115,000 leaves a gap of $163,000/year. This means the median household needs to earn 142% more to comfortably qualify for the median home.
These are market averages. Your situation depends on your income, debts, and credit.
🏦 Ask Zai About San Francisco → ← All CitiesSource: BLS OEWS 2024, Zillow ZHVI May 2026, FRC Underwriting Model. Not financial advice. Educational analysis only.
Income tells you what you can carry. It does not tell you whether a lender will say yes — and that varies more than almost anyone realises.
And it is not simply who applies where: standardizing on state, loan amount, income, debt-to-income and loan-to-value, applicant mix explains only a 2.7× range in expected outcomes.
CFPB HMDA 2025, computed by FinanceRateCalc. Covers the highest-volume lenders published per market, not all lenders. Rates reflect applicant mix as well as lender practice — historical observations, not predictions. CC BY 4.0, not independently reproduced.