The top 10 U.S. neighborhoods where prospective buyers must earn the most to afford a home. 80 of them are located in California.

Buying a home is already a significant, and sometimes even scary, transaction in and of itself, but when you add the current state of the real estate market, the process becomes even more daunting. ATTOM, a real estate data provider, has ranked the U.S. counties that require the highest annual salaries to buy a median-priced home. As noted in the report for the second quarter of 2022, the median home price in the U.S. is $440,300, generally speaking it would take a minimum salary of $75,000 to buy a median-priced home in half of U.S. real estate markets. The highest salaries needed to buy a home are found in the states of New York and California.

There's a list of 10 U.S. counties where' 'Potential buyers need the highest incomes to buy a home:

• Manhattan County, New York.
• S San Mateo County, California.
• Marin County, California.
• Santa Clara County, California.
• San Francisco County, California.
• Santa Cruz County, California.
• Alameda County, California.
• Orange County, California.
• Kings County, New York.
• Napa County, California.

Manhattan Borough in New York ranks as the top county in the United States where buyers need to earn the highest amount of money to buy a home.

The County of San Mateo in California ranks second on the list. It is at the center of a continuous urban area stretching from San Jose (Santa Clara County) in the south to San Francisco County in the north, as indicated by the California Employment Development Department. San Mateo is one of nine counties that contribute significantly to the San Francisco Bay Area economy. In May 2023, home prices in San Mateo County fell 8.2% from a year earlier, with a median price of $1.6 million,' 'according to RedFin.

Third place goes to Marin County in California. It is on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge relative to San Francisco and is also part of the San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, California statistical agglomeration. Potential buyers need to earn more than $352,153 annually to afford the median home price in this county. The median home price in Marin County is $1,466,631, down 7.4 percent from a year earlier, according to Zillow.