Starter-homes' crazy California costs: Redfin data

Starter homes now cost $1 million in record number of cities

According to a Zillow study, starter homes cost $1 million in 237 cities.

OAKLAND, Calif. - Good luck buying a starter home in the Bay Area: You'll need to earn $285,000 a year.

Broken down, your monthly payments would be $7,000 or more, according to real estate brokerage site, Redfin, as San Francisco starter homes went for a median of $950,000 in July.

"Homes in the Bay Area are so expensive that even many high-earning tech employees have been priced out of the area, so they’re looking at neighboring cities," Craig Pellegrini, a Redfin Premier agent in the San Jose area, said in a news release.

He said he had a client who wanted to buy something in Palo Alto, but couldn't afford it, so they began looking in Sunnyvale and Santa Clara, instead.

"That’s pricing out a lot of lower earners in those neighboring cities completely," he said.

In half of the 50 most populous U.S. metros, a family earning the local median income can't afford a starter home, Redfin concluded. The gap is biggest in Anaheim and Los Angeles, where families would need to earn twice the local income to afford a starter home.

Anaheim’s median income is $122,192; a family needs to earn $251,302 to afford the typical starter home, according to Redfin data.

In Los Angeles, the median income is $93,197 and a household needs to earn $184,477 for a starter home.

The gap is only slightly smaller in San Diego, San Francisco and San Jose.

It's much less expensive to buy homes that are not in the Golden State, including Detroit, St. Louis, PIttsburgh, Cleveland and Philadelphia, Redfin found.

The estimated monthly payment for starter homes in the U.S. requires an annual household income of about $80,000, which translates into $2,000 a month or less, Redfin data showed.

Redfin estimates the median U.S. household makes about $84,000 a year.