American households are spending more of their income on housing than at any other point in recorded history.
According to an article in The Real Deal, housing in the United States is less affordable than ever. “In September 2022, a median-income household would have had to spend a little over 46 percent of its income to afford a median-priced home. That’s a 14-point spike from September 2021, when a household had to spend about a third of its income to afford a home in its community.” This remains the case in all but one U.S. metro areas with a population of more than 500,000.
California takes the top five spots on the list of most unaffordable metro areas, with the New York-Newark-Jersey City metro area, where it would cost a median-income household 66 percent of their income to buy a home, coming in sixth.
The cities with the steepest declines in affordability, the article notes, are in the Southeast, where housing prices were historically low.
Read the full story: Housing affordability is worst on record, data shows
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