Boise among top 5 affordable cities for home buyers, study says. Other new study: Wut.

One of the great things about living in Boise is that experts from outside Idaho constantly tell us what it’s like to live here.

By great, I mean aggravating. And by experts, I mean random websites.

“Boise is among the Top 10 affordable cities for home buyers,” proclaimed an email this week in the Statesman inbox. That terrific news comes from a Move.org article, “The Most Affordable Cities and Metro Areas for First-Time Homeowners.”

“As mortgage rates across the country continue to decline, hitting historic lows, many Americans continue to search for their dream home,” the email said. “... Move.org analyzed home values, pricing and occupancy to find the most affordable locations for first-time home buyers. New data reveals that Boise, Idaho, is the #4 most affordable city for first-time homeowners in the nation.”

Once you’ve pried that palm from your face, feel free to groan.

Or laugh, which is what I did 24 hours later. That’s when another email arrived declaring, “In February, Boise ranked #33 out of 100 cities in terms of owning a home.”

Except in this ranking, No. 1 is the least affordable city to own a home, and No. 100 is the most affordable.

So Boise ranks in the bottom third.

That’s more like it. That study, from RealtyHop, says that Boise’s median home price is $379,900. That’s way higher — and seems way more accurate — than Move.org, which put the number at a Bizarro-World-low of $239,900. That supposedly came from the U.S. Census Bureau. Um, what, in 2007?

In reality, the median price for homes sold in Ada County in December rose to a record $434,900, up $9,900 from November, also a record.

RealtyHop’s rankings are based on share of income for home ownership. In Boise, that figure is 36.51 percent. In other words, many jobs here don’t pay squat. Not in comparison to what it costs to own a home. (Or pay your property taxes.)

Still, we’re not nearly as bad off as No. 1-ranked Los Angeles, where the share of income to own a house is an insane 83.82 percent, according to RealtyHop. Where the median price is $940,000 — and the household income is only $62,142, which is $2,107 higher than it is in Boise.

Wait, wut?

I question the real-life accuracy of pretty much all the numbers in most of these website wonder-studies. Unless you live in Idaho, you don’t know what trying to make ends meet is like here, right?

By the way, anybody got a lead on a clean, cheap North End apartment rental? I just saw a study saying that’s the No. 1 place to find one.

This story was originally published January 28, 2021 at 11:32 AM.