Where You Can Co-Buy at Different AMIs in Greater Boston

Everyone thinks homeownership is impossible, but what if by working together it was attainable today?

This table answers the question: if you're a moderate income earner, where you buy a home in Greater Boston? Each row is a town. "Median Price" and "Monthly Cost" columns come straight from our own sales data - what homes actually sold for and what owning one costs per month. The AMI columns (60%, 80%, 100%) are income limits set by HUD for a one-person household in our region, converted into a monthly housing budget - basically, the most a single person at that income level can safely spend on housing. The "Locked Out / Unlocked" columns compare the two: if the monthly cost is higher than the income limit allows, that person is locked out of buying alone. Once you add co-buyers, the cost per person drops, and in most towns it drops enough to become affordable.

How We Calculated the AMI Income Ceilings

Why the same income limit applies to every town: HUD sets this income limit once per metro area, not per town - all 20 towns above sit inside the same Boston-Cambridge-Quincy HUD area, so the income limit doesn't change, only the home prices do. The 28% is the standard "don't spend more than this on housing" rule lenders use. Figures here are for a single person (1-person household), not a family of four - a more realistic comparison since many buyers coming to us are individuals, not families.

AMI Affordability Table

Monthly cost per person: mortgage, taxes, insurance and repairs on an even share of the property.

Sources

AMI income limits

MHP 2026 Income Limits PDF (mhp.net), Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA table, 1-person household: $72,000, $96,000 and $120,000 per year.

Affordability ceiling

Each AMI income figure converted to a monthly housing budget using the standard 28% front-end debt-to-income ratio: Ceiling = Annual Income × 0.28 ÷ 12.

Why 28%?

28% is the standard "front-end" debt-to-income ratio lenders use to evaluate mortgage affordability — the maximum share of gross monthly income a household should spend on housing costs to be considered a safe loan. It is a widely used underwriting benchmark, not a Restored Living assumption.

Property data

Median price per bed and listing counts from the Restored Living own_town_median table; median rent per bed from the rent_by_town table.

Market selection

20 towns selected as key Greater Boston markets — not the full ~345-town dataset. Can be expanded on request.

Household size

AMI figures used are for a 1-person household (not 4-person), reflecting that many buyers coming to Restored Living are individuals rather than families, and that a 4-bedroom property is shared by multiple co-buyers rather than occupied by one household.