Cost of renting or owning a home in NJ is absolutely crushing us

Either way you slice it, it’s bad.

Whether you’re a homeowner paying a mortgage and dealing with the highest property taxes in the nation folded in, or if you rent your home, you’re in a financial chokehold that’s likely killing you.

According to a new study just out by Harvard, more than one third of New Jersey residents are spending 30% or more of their incomes on housing. It gets worse. Shockingly worse.

One in five of us in New Jersey spend more than half of their income on rent or the cost of home ownership.

That last stat is considered to be a “severe” cost burden by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University study.

The National Foundation for Credit Counseling says 30% of your gross income is the highest you should ever want to spend on housing costs, which by the way they say isn’t just your rent or just your mortgage and property taxes.

It’s also including your utilities like gas, electric, water, etc.. It might be scary to do the math on your own situation.

Especially if you rent.

A decade ago the percentage of New Jersey residents earning between $40,000 and $75,000 spending at least 33% of their income on housing was 15%. Today it’s 40%.

Clearly that’s making it even more difficult for these people to ever save enough to get out of a rental and into home ownership.

That “severe” category mentioned earlier, where people are trapped paying more than 50% of their income just on housing?

According to the Harvard study, 12.5% of New Jersey homeowners are in that situation. The same for 27.7% of people who rent.

As bad as it is here, we’re not even the worst in the nation.

The Garden State ranks 8th worst overall. California was the worst state for homeowners. Florida ranked the worst state for renters.

The best for either renters or homeowners was South Dakota.

So when you’re working so hard and wondering if you’re just doing everything wrong and feel you have nothing to show for it like your parents and grandparents did, it’s not your fault.

Nor are you alone.

Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Jeff Deminski only.

Report a correction 👈