First-Time-Buyer Blues.

The housing market may have crashed in many parts of the country, but there is still a contingent of would-be buyers living an alternate reality. They make a decent living, they save, but it's still not enough to break into the gated communities formerly known as New York, Los Angeles and Boston. In these metropolitan areas and their outskirts, pricing is likely to end up higher, relative to local income, than it was before the housing bubble, according to Fiserv Case-Shiller. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]