Brooklyn Has Least Affordable Homes, Detroit Most Affordable

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 11:35AM EST · Published Mar 24, 4:55AM EDT

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Brooklyn Has Least Affordable Homes, Detroit Most Affordable — © Thinkstock

According to RealtyTrac, Americans’ ability to own a home has become financially more difficult recently, but the trend varies wildly by location. The Brooklyn borough of New York City has the least affordable homes, based on income of residents versus home prices. Detroit has the most affordable homes.

Nationwide, RealtyTrac found, based on data covered in its Q1 2016 Home Affordability Index:

9 percent of U.S. county housing markets were less affordable than their historically normal levels, up from 2 percent of markets that exceeded historic home affordability levels a year ago.

Also:

Out of the 456 counties analyzed in the report, 43 counties (9 percent) had an affordability index below 100 in the first quarter of 2016, meaning buying a home was less affordable than the historically normal level for that county going back to the first quarter of 2005. That was up from 10 counties (2 percent of the 456 counties analyzed) exceeding historically normal home affordability levels in the first quarter of 2015.

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The most affordable homes tended to be located in areas of urban blight and poverty:

The top five most affordable counties based on percentage of average wages to buy a median priced home were Wayne County, Michigan (Detroit) at 8.5 percent; Baltimore County, Maryland at 9.2 percent; Clayton County, Georgia in the Atlanta metro area at 10.1 percent; Bay County, Michigan in the Bay City metro area at 11.5 percent; and Rock Island County, Illinois in the Davenport-Moline-Rock Island metro area at 12.3 percent.

The majority of these are in the old rust belt.

The least affordable homes were in the rich areas of California and two boroughs of New York City:

The top five most affordable counties based on percentage of average wages to buy a median priced home were Wayne County, Michigan (Detroit) at 8.5 percent; Baltimore County, Maryland at 9.2 percent; Clayton County, Georgia in the Atlanta metro area at 10.1 percent; Bay County, Michigan in the Bay City metro area at 11.5 percent; and Rock Island County, Illinois in the Davenport-Moline-Rock Island metro area at 12.3 percent.

Ironically, the poor can afford homes, based on this analysis, and the rich cannot.

Methodology: The report analyzed median home prices derived from publicly recorded sales deed data collected by RealtyTrac and average wage data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in 456 U.S. counties with a combined population of 221 million. The affordability index was based on the percentage of average wages needed to make monthly house payments on a median-priced home with a 30-year fixed rate and a 3% down payment, including property taxes, home insurance and mortgage insurance. Average 30-year fixed interest rates from the Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey were used to calculate the monthly house payments. Only counties with a population of at least 100,000 and sufficient home price and wage data quarterly back to the first quarter of 2005 were used in the analysis.

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.