{"id":4381,"date":"2025-05-01T16:08:14","date_gmt":"2025-05-01T16:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/friscotimes.org\/?p=4381"},"modified":"2025-05-01T23:44:35","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T23:44:35","slug":"americans-need-to-make-six-figures-to-afford-a-median-price-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/friscotimes.org\/?p=4381","title":{"rendered":"Americans need to make six figures to afford a median-price home"},"content":{"rendered":" \r\n<br><br>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>In April, the national median list price for a home was about $431,250,<\/strong> a Realtor.com analysis revealed. So to comfortably afford a typical home, a household needs to earn about $114,000 a year. But after years of wild home price appreciation, there\u2019s been a slowdown.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The pandemic changed the housing world. Americans need to earn about 70% more today than six years ago to comfortably afford a median-priced home, a Realtor.com monthly <a href=\"https:\/\/www.realtor.com\/research\/april-2025-data\/\">analysis <\/a>published Thursday revealed.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In April, the national median list price for a home was around $431,250\u2014an almost 37% increase since April 2019, before the pandemic. To comfortably afford a typical home, a household needs to earn about $114,000 a year. That\u2019s a $47,000, or 70.1%, leap compared to 2019. But real median household income in the United States is only $80,610, per the latest government <a href=\"https:\/\/www.census.gov\/library\/publications\/2024\/demo\/p60-282.html\">data<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That figure assumes a 30-year fixed mortgage, a 20% down payment, and no more than 30% of gross income spent on housing. (The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nar.realtor\/newsroom\/first-time-home-buyers-shrink-to-historic-low-of-24-as-buyer-age-hits-record-high\">median down payment<\/a> is 18% among all homebuyers and 9% for first-time buyers; and any more than 30% of income spent on housing would fall under the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.census.gov\/newsroom\/press-releases\/2024\/renter-households-cost-burdened-race.html\">cost-burdened<\/a> definition.) Nonetheless, a person, or household, would need to make about $9,500 a month before taxes to cover the mortgage, property taxes, and insurance, the Realtor.com analysis shows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Necessary earnings vary geographically: In the Los Angeles metropolitan area, for example, the income needed to comfortably afford a typical home\u2014priced at $1,195,000\u2014is $315,892, an 86% increase in six years.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Home prices soared throughout the pandemic because people could work from anywhere and wanted more space. Then <a href=\"https:\/\/fred.stlouisfed.org\/series\/MORTGAGE30US\">mortgage rates<\/a> skyrocketed from their pandemic-era rock bottoms of sub-3% once the Federal Reserve entered a tightening cycle to tame scorching-hot inflation. The two are still very high, relatively speaking. But home price appreciation has slowed, and some economists predict they could fall this year\u2014and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mortgagenewsdaily.com\/mortgage-rates\">mortgage rates<\/a> have come down from a two-decade <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/business-67152845\">high<\/a> of 8%, to 6.81%. So, there is something of a silver lining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cEven with today\u2019s affordability hurdles, meaningful changes in the market could give buyers a better shot at finding a home,\u201d Realtor.com chief economist Danielle Hale said in a statement. The number of homes for sale is rising in many markets, she said, \u201cgiving shoppers more choices than they\u2019ve had in years.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Plus, sellers are becoming more flexible on pricing, she said, so \u201cwhile higher mortgage rates are certainly weighing on demand, the silver lining is that the market is starting to rebalance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the housing market is at a standstill, as it has been for a couple of years, because not many people are buying or selling. Fewer people are buying homes, because they cannot afford them\u2014and homeowners who either secured a low mortgage rate during the pandemic or are mortgage-free aren\u2019t selling. Although, that appears to be changing.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The number of actively listed homes rose 30.6% compared to the same time last year. For the first time, the number of homes for sale in April surpassed April 2020 levels\u2014a pandemic benchmark, per the Realtor.com analysis. But active inventory is still below typical pre-pandemic levels. Still, more sellers are coming back to market than buyers, and they\u2019re slashing prices to sell. In April, 18% of listings had price reductions, a 2.5% increase compared to a year ago.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>This story was originally featured on Fortune.com<\/p>\r\n<br>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The pandemic changed the housing world. Americans need to earn about 70% more today than six years ago to comfortably afford a median-priced home, a Realtor.com monthly analysis published Thursday&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":4382,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[1983,1162,3526,160,5639],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Americans need to make six figures to afford a median-price home - 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