If you want to live in Southern California, it’s going to cost you.
According to Zillow’s July Real Estate Market Reports, households earning less than $60,000 are spending half their income on keeping a roof over their head, just as housing prices are expected to rise nearly 6 percent into 2015.
The average price for a house in the LA area is around $480,000, while Orange County has an average price of around $600,000, according to Zillow.
Meanwhile, rental prices in high job growth cities like Santa Monica have soared around 20 percent in the last year, according to Zillow’s data.
Richard Green, who heads the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate, said another main factor in decreasing affordability is that average incomes in Southern California are lower than other regions with expensive housing such as New York and San Francisco.
“The typical person in Los Angeles is making considerably less money than they were 20 years ago,” Green said. “An increase in the minimum wage would help. It wouldn’t solve it, but it would help.”