Job

Who can afford to live in Alameda County?

This tool compares what jobs and fixed incomes pay with what it costs to rent or buy a home in Alameda County. Work through it from top to bottom:

  1. Which jobs can afford housing here? shows what common jobs, fixed incomes, and the minimum wage pay compared with the income needed to rent or buy here. Select a job to use it in the rest of the tool.
  2. Choose a job and a community: describe your household’s income. Pick an occupation and experience level, add a second earner or children, or enter your own income, then choose where you want to live. The starting example is a single parent with one child working as an early-career elementary school teacher.
  3. Where can you afford to rent? compares your housing budget with typical rents in each city and with HUD Fair Market Rents in each ZIP code.
  4. Can you afford to buy? compares the monthly cost of the typical home with your income and estimates how long it would take to save for a down payment.

Housing is treated as affordable when it costs no more than 30 percent of income, the federal standard; households paying more are considered cost-burdened. All incomes are before taxes, the basis HUD, the income limits, and mortgage lenders use. To learn more about your community’s population, housing stock, and housing costs, visit the Alameda County Housing Needs Explorer.

v1.3.2 · October 15, 2026 · Have feedback on this dashboard? Tell us here

1 · Which jobs can afford housing here?

Pay by job compared with the income needed to rent or buy

Jobs shown
Pay level
Pays enough to rent without being cost-burdened Rent would take 30 to 50% of pay Rent would take more than half of pay Income needed to rent Income needed to buy the typical home

2 · Choose a job and a community

Experience level
Leave blank to use the occupation wage. Use gross pay before taxes, the same basis HUD and lenders use.
Children and other dependents
1
Children or other household members without earnings. Household size sets the AMI band and the suggested home size.
Home size needed
Sets which HUD rent is used. Asking-rent and home-value figures cover all home sizes.
Share of income for housing i
Your household’s affordable monthly housing budget i
$0

3 · Where can you afford to rent?

Rent by city compared with what you can afford i

30% of income or lessMore than 30%, cost-burdenedMore than 50%, severely burdenedRent this income supports

Fair Market Rent by ZIP code i

AffordableCost-burdenedSeverely burdenedZIPs in the selected city

4 · Can you afford to buy?

Down payment
Below 20 percent, lenders add mortgage insurance to the monthly payment.
30-year fixed. Default is the Freddie Mac weekly average for September 3, 2026.
How savings are estimated
Amount already set aside toward a purchase. Starts at $10,000 as an example; enter your own.

Monthly cost of the typical home in i

Affordable budget (30% of income)Mortgage paymentProperty taxInsuranceMortgage insurance

Saving for a down payment

Time to save for a down payment
Model assumptions: adjust our presets
Proposition 13 base of 1 percent plus local voter-approved debt. Varies by tax rate area.
Share of home value.
Share of loan amount, applied when the down payment is under 20 percent.
Cash due at purchase on top of the down payment.
Annual, for example a high-yield savings account.
Annual raise applied to savings contributions.
The down payment target grows with prices while you save.

Wage data: load the latest file

The built-in list is the BLS May 2025 metropolitan area release for San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont. To use newer or more local figures, load either the California Employment Development Department (EDD) Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) workbook for Alameda County (part of Oakland-Fremont-Berkeley MD), first quarter 2026, or the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) metropolitan area workbook (oesm25ma.xlsx). The file is read in your browser and is not uploaded anywhere. For the BLS workbook, rows for the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont metropolitan area are used. Hourly figures are converted to annual pay at 2,080 hours.

Sources: EDD OEWS data tables; BLS OEWS tables.

Methods and definitions