Job

Wages and Housing Costs 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. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. Can you afford to buy? estimates the home price your income supports, the monthly cost of the typical home, and how long it would take to save for a down payment.
  4. What job do you need to have? lines up occupations, fixed incomes, and the minimum wage against the income needed to rent or buy.

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

v1.2 · October 1, 2026 · Have feedback on this dashboard? Tell us here

1 · 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

2 · 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

3 · 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.

Monthly cost of the typical home in i

Principal and interestProperty taxInsuranceMortgage insurance

Saving for the down payment

Your savingsDown payment and closing costs needed
CityTypical home valueMonthly costShare of your incomeIncome needed to buyCash needed up frontSavings per yearYears to save

4 · What job do you need to have?

Typical pay by occupation against the income needed for housing

25th to 75th percentile payFair Market Rent is affordable (30% of pay or less)Cost-burdened at Fair Market Rent (over 30%)Severely burdened (over 50%)Can also afford the typical home

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