This Is How Unaffordable Buying a Home Is in America

In the third quarter, a median-priced home was too expensive for homebuyers in 84 percent of counties studied in Attom Data Solutions' report.

Additionally, 30 percent of Americans lived in communities that require minimum household income of $100,000 to afford the median-priced home if they had at least a three percent down payment and took out a conventional 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, Realtor.com reports. Home prices grew faster than wages in 86 percent of counties in the Attom report. At the national level, affordability hit a decade-low, and Denver was found to have the most unaffordable counties in the U.S., largely due to the wage-home price growth gap.

Forget affordability—the American dream is now a fairy tale for many would-be home buyers. To come up with its figures, the real estate information company looked at U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data in each of the 440 counties it analyzed as well as sales deed data. “We’ve reached a tipping point for affordability,” says Daren Blomquist, senior vice president of ATTOM. “Something has to give," he says. "Prices cannot climb as quickly as they have been over the last few years.”

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