If the adage about rising tides lifting all boats is true, then it comes as no surprise that rising incomes have been helping to offset recent increases in mortgage rates, offering a boost to housing affordability in the first quarter of this year, the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index shows. With an increase of 59.6 percent of homes sold that were affordable to median income earners, the index showed that 61.6 percent of new and existing homes sold between the beginning of January and the end of March were affordable to families earning the U.S. median income of $71,900. That median income mark reflects an increase of 5.7 percent in 2018. According to a news article in Realtor Magazine, the NAHB chief economist Robert Dietz reports that this wage growth has helped to boost housing affordability. He goes on to say that a growing economy, along with tight inventories and increasing household formations, will lift housing production in the year ahead. This prediction is dependent, of course, on the fate of mortgage rates as the year progresses. According to the article, of the 237 metro areas analyzed in the first quarter, the index showed 167 markets experiencing an increase in affordability compared to the fourth quarter of 2017. While we aren’t expecting you to scramble to an area based solely on affordability, if you’re looking for the nation’s most affordable major housing market, look no further than Youngstown-Warren-Boardman, OH-PA metro area, where 90.9 percent of all new and existing homes sold in the first quarter were affordable to families earning the area’s median income of $60,100. Other affordable major housing markets (in order) were Indianapolis-Carmel-Anderson, Ind.; Scranton-Wilkes Barre-Hazleton, PA.; Toledo, OH; and Harrisburg-Carlisle, PA. If you prefer small-town living, the most affordable small market is Cumberland, Md.-W.Va., where 98.5 percent of the homes sold in the first quarter are affordable to families earning the median income of $55,500. The most unaffordable place to live if you fall in the median income slot? It’s still San Francisco, CA, which remains the most costly major housing market, and where only 9.2 percent of homes sold in the first quarter of 2018 were affordable to families earning the area’s median income of $119,600. California continues to dominate the least affordable markets, with Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale; Anaheim-Santa Ana-Irvine; San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara; and San Diego-Carlsbad falling closely behind them.
