Home Ownership Not Possible for 20% of Americans, Except in Johnstown, Danville, Bay City, Racine and Terre Haute,

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 3:31AM EST · Published Sep 15, 11:05AM EDT

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Home Ownership Not Possible for 20% of Americans, Except in Johnstown, Danville, Bay City, Racine and Terre Haute, — © Thinkstock

The latest study on home affordability is very much the same as others this year. Home ownership is outside the economic boundaries of many Americans, primarily for income reasons and secondarily due to home prices.

A new study from MagnifyMoney concludes that 20% of Americans cannot afford a home. The analysis is traditional, based on prices in metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), in this case 380 of them (virtually the entire universe).

According to the study:

Home Ownership is out of reach for 20% of Americans. In 79 out of 380 areas analyzed, workers of all age groups wouldn’t be able to qualify for a mortgage loan large enough to cover the cost of a median-priced home.

And it takes a very long time to save for a home, according to the same study:

Across all 380 metro areas analyzed…

45 to 65 year-olds need an average of 4.69 years to save for a home.

25 to 44 year-olds need an average of 5.63 years to save for a home.

15 to 24 year-olds need an average of 27.2 years to save for a home.

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One word of note: MSAs can be very large, so they do not necessarily represent the economic situation in every town and city in the area.

The five easiest places to buy a home:

Johnstown, PA

Danville, IL

Bay City, MI

Racine, WI

Terre Haute, IN

The five hardest places to buy a home:

Salinas, CA
Santa Maria-Santa Barbara, CA
Santa Cruz-Watsonville, CA
Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA
Kahului-Wailuku-Lahaina, HI

Although not a provable observation, most of the expensive markets (hardest places) are along the relatively rich California cost. The easiest are in rust belt cities.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.