Orange County house hunters face potential house payments that have skyrocketed to more than double what they cost five years ago.

My trusty spreadsheet tracked this yardstick of affordability by looking at its 37-year history of CoreLogic homebuying stats through November and swings in the 30-year fixed mortgage rate from Freddie Mac.

Estimated payments were calculated by combining a month’s median sales price and mortgage rate.

The pain

A typical Orange County buyer in November got a $7,700 monthly payment, assuming a 20% downpayment. That’s the fifth-highest since 1988, 1% above a year ago and 126% higher in five years.

Adding to local homebuying’s financial challenge are the wages required to complete a purchase. If this hypothetical buyer spends 40% of their income on this payment, they’d need to earn $231,000 a year — plus have $235,900 in cash for the downpayment.

Pressure points

Why? Start with the Orange County median sales price of $1.18 million for the month. That’s fifth-largest since 1988, 7% above a year ago and 60% over five years. Compound that with mortgage rate gyrations.

Now November’s 6.8% average is below 7.4% a year earlier, but this financing benchmark was 6.8% two years ago, 3.7% five years ago, and has averaged 6.2% since 1988.

Bottom line

Stubbornly lofty prices and rates add up to dramatically slower homebuying in Orange County.

Contemplate that buyers completed 1,970 transactions a month on average during the last two years, a pace 35% below the previous two years and 41% slower than sales counts since 1988.

Or look at the slump this way: Only 5% of all two-year periods since 1988 have fewer sales.

PS: The best news for house hunters is growing choice.

Countywide, there were 2,720 average active listings of existing homes during the past year, according to Realtor.com. This supply of residences for sale is 17% above the previous 12 months — but 59% smaller than pre-pandemic 2019.

Jonathan Lansner is the business columnist for the Southern California News Group. He can be reached at jlansner@scng.com