lection Two
immer
s next
semester Fort Worth the best choice
subjects,,
A 3-hoiif
as County
JUt Of the I University News Service
3y Or njgttlV'ort Worth has the most afforda-
' blf housing of the stale’s six largest
r matlOntOlities, and Austin and Dallas are the
least affordable, according to an in
dex developed by the Texas Real Es
tate Research Center (TRERC).
The Texas Housing Af fordability
Index defines the conditions under
Rich housing is affordable and
then uses these conditions as a bench
mark for comparison. Dr. Arthur
Right, a Texas A&M research
economist and developer of the in
dex, says.
■“Housing affordability continues
1 to he of major concern to many Tex-
—^ Rs,” Wright says. “Statewide, the
ability of a meciian-income house-
- hold to purchase a home deterio-
I’i rated slightly in 1984 from the jiast
year, but still this was the second best.
Affordability of housing in Texas
i
'ST u
33-8600
59-5220
38-6100
>4-7780
year since 1980.”
According to the index, housing is
affordable when 50 percent of the
local households could theoretically
afford the required mortgage pay
ments associated with current finan
cial requirements and the average
priced home sold.
At this level, the affordability in
dex is 1.0. The higher the index, the
more affordable the housing.
Fort Worth was the only city to
have an affordability index value
above 1.0 for 1984. Fort Worth has
had the highest index value in 10 of
the 12 years studied and an index
value of at least one in nine of the
jjast 12 years, W'right says.
With index values for 1984 of
0.08 and 0.75 respectively, Austin
and Dallas had the least affordable
homes. Austin’s houses were slightly
less affordable than they were in
1985 when the index value was 0.69
and Dallas homes were more af for
dable in 1984 compared to that city’s
1983 index of 0.70. ,
Although it declined from the
jnevious year, El Paso’s 0.94 index
value for 1984 was the second high
est. Houston had the third highest
index value and San Antonio was
ranked fourth, although housing
there was less affordable than in
1983.
“Historically, housing has tended
to be less af fordable nationwide than
in Texas, but the strong national
economic recovery has reversed this
relationship for 1983 and 1984,”
Wright says.
The affordability index value for
the state as a whole was 0.83, com
pared to the U.S. value for 1984 of
0.91.
“Both (Texas and the U.S.) in
dexes were similar in 1973, but by
1978 the affordability index for
Texas was 20 percentage points
higher than TRERC’S nationwide
index of 1.15,” the real estate econo
mist says. “While the entire nation
experienced substantial interest rate
increases between 1973 and 1984,
rapidly rising prices of housing in
Texas caused comparable mortgage
payments to rise 419 percent while
nationwide payments rose only 271
percent.
ointed out that the aver-
Wr
right poi
oricect h
1984 was nearly $89,000 with
monthly principal and interest pay
ments averaging $783. The average
monthly principal and interest pay
ments nationwide for 1984 was
$718, he said.
UPI to lay off more
of its editorial staff
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — United
Press International, which has
filed for protection from its cred
itors under federal bankruptcy
statutes, will lay off more of its
domestic editorial employees, the
wire service said Wednesday.
In a story made available to
The Associated Press by UPI, the
news service quoted Maxwell Mc-
Crohon, its editor-in-chief, as say
ing that “there will be some fur
ther layoffs within a few days.”
He did not say how many.
The story, however, quoted um
identified company sources as
saying that a cutback of 50 to 100
domestic staff positions would be
implemented, leaving between
700 and 800 UPI editorial em
ployees in the United States.
April 26, after UPI announced
that it intended to file for Chap
ter 11 protection while it reorga
nizes its finances, the news agency
said it laid off 80 employees, in
cluding permanent editorial em
ployees. Since last July, about 200
positions, many of them non-edi
torial jobs, have been eliminated,
the story said.
Further staff reductions
should be avoided if newspaper
and broadcast clients accept a 9.9
percent rate hike announced
Sunday, the story said, quoting
McCrohon and other top UPI of
ficials who were not identified.
UPI said its total staff is 1,550
employees, which includes about
250 workers paid in foreign cur
rencies, the dispatch said.
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