Anyone trying to jump from renting to owning in San Diego is running headfirst into some brutal math. A new housing index from the Burnham-Moores Center at the University of San Diego ranks the San Diego metropolitan area as the fifth-most expensive place to own a home among the nation's 50 largest metros. According to the study, renters in San Diego County who tried to buy a median-priced property today would end up spending about 86.8% of their annual income on mortgage payments, property taxes and other ownership costs.
The index is designed to capture the full cost of ownership, not just the mortgage, and it paints a stark picture for local renters considering buying.
As reported by The San Diego Union-Tribune, the new study draws on a quarterly Housing Affordability Index produced by the Burnham-Moores Center. The Union-Tribune walks through county-level breakdowns showing how taxes, insurance and HOA dues pile onto the price of buying in Southern California.
According to the Burnham-Moores Center at USD, the index benchmarks ownership costs against renter incomes and folds in taxes, insurance, utilities, HOA fees and maintenance, a broader view than many traditional measures. University of San Diego materials say the index was developed by Norm Miller and Ian Kennedy and covers hundreds of U.S. metro areas.
How San Diego Stacks Up
On the national leaderboard of pricey places to own, San Diego is keeping some expensive company. The index puts Los Angeles at the top of the list as the most costly big metro in which to own a home, with San Jose and San Francisco following close behind and New York rounding out the top five. The San Diego Union-Tribune notes that the rankings were calculated among the nation's 50 largest metro areas.
What's Eating Your Paycheck
For San Diego County residents, the index breaks down exactly what is chewing through would-be buyers' paychecks. It calculates that property taxes would take up about 11.6% of annual income, homeowner association fees about 4.6%, insurance roughly 2.1% and utilities about 3.7%. Those charges stack on top of a mortgage and can quickly push the total cost of owning toward or even past a full year's income.
Those line items are what the Burnham-Moores methodology counts when it compares ownership to renter incomes, which helps explain why ownership looks especially out of reach in coastal California. Burnham-Moores Center officials say the goal is to show the realistic minimum income a household needs to convert from renting to owning.
Local Context And Policy Pressure
Local data and business groups say the findings simply put numbers to what residents already feel: incomes have risen, but not nearly fast enough to catch up with the region's high costs. The San Diego Regional EDC reported that by the end of 2024, households needed more than $235,000 to afford the median-priced home and that a majority of renters remain cost-burdened, a reality that lines up with the index's conclusions. The San Diego Regional EDC recommends supply-side solutions and streamlined approvals to help close the gap.
For buyers and policymakers, the new index is one more piece of evidence that owning in San Diego will require much higher incomes, targeted subsidies or a significant increase in housing that is priced for middle-income households. The figures underline why local leaders keep pointing to production, conversions and targeted financing as the levers most likely to move the needle.
