Middle-class homebuyers are being priced out of major U.S. cities, with 70 percent of homes unaffordable for average people even in the best cases. New data from Bankrate looked at the 34 largest metropolitan areas to assess how much of each city’s housing market was affordable for its median earners. Overall, 75 percent of homes were out of the median buyer’s price range across the cities, with some of the lowest rates at less than 1 percent. Only 11 of the 34 cities had 30 percent of their listed properties within budget for average earners, with the route to homeownership easiest in the Rust Belt. Among the best cities were Pittsburgh with 55 percent of homes, St. Louis with 50 percent, Baltimore with 43 percent, Detroit with 42 percent, and Birmingham, Alabama, with 41 percent. Meanwhile, among the most unaffordable were Miami with 0.4 percent, Los Angeles with 0.5 percent, San Diego with 1.6 percent, New Orleans with 2.7 percent, and Boston with 4.8 percent. Speaking to Axios, Bankrate data analyst Alex Gailey said, “Without a meaningful increase in housing supply, particularly in places where people want to live and work, affordability is unlikely to improve even if mortgage rates ease.”
The post Where Homes Are Most and Least Affordable in America Revealed appeared first on The Daily Beast