Despite low mortgage rates, buyers looking for affordable housing face limited options, many experiencing all-out bidding wars for homes amid historically low inventories. But Realtor.com identified three markets where buyers have more plentiful options of affordable housing. All are all in the Southeast U.S., with median home prices between $265,000 and $350,000. Realtor.com says these markets maintain lower prices due to looser building regulations, resulting in lower costs for builders and developers that are passed on to buyers.
"This is a problem that was existing before the pandemic and in many ways was accelerated by the pandemic," says realtor.com's chief economist, Danielle Hale.
"Affordability has improved slightly, but it’s such a slight improvement that many people may feel like it hasn’t changed much," she adds. Although mortgage rates have sunk to record lows, a steady rise in home prices has offset that somewhat.
Using a proprietary affordability score that shows how many home listings in each market are affordable to local buyers, and looking at markets that had at least 10 active listings for every 1,000 households, the realtor.com team found that only three metropolitan markets in the U.S. met their requirements. In an April assessment, there were six.
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