Brookings Institution: Not as Expensive to Live in Boston as Reputation Suggests
Housing and transportation costs should be less than 45 percent of your income. Are you under that goal?
Housing is generally the largest expense anyone has to deal with, but it's not the only factor you should consider when buying a home. Sure, you may find a cheper home the further you move from Boston, but the transportation costs of getting to and from work everyday offset some of those gains, according to an index compiled by the Center for Neighborhood Technology. The group, funded by the Brookings Institution, developed the Housing and Transportation Affordability Index to examine how transportation costs, when added to housing costs, affects the overall affordability of a community (you can read about the methodology used here). The rule of thumb adopted by the study states that housing is affordable if it's 30 percent or less of your…
