Having a good job no longer guarantees a person can afford to buy or rent a home following decades of underbuilding, rising interest rates and wage stagnation.
Last year, 176 metropolitan statistical areas required a six-figure income to buy a typically priced home with a 10% down payment, up from 30 MSAs in 2019, according to a National Housing Conference (NHC) report. In 125 MSAs, the income needed to purchase has doubled or more since 2019.
Meanwhile, 47% of tracked occupations don’t offer a high enough wage to afford a two-bedroom apartment, the study found. That’s up from 38% in 2019. In 32 MSAs, the salary needed to rent comfortably exceeds $75,000, said NHC.
“Even traditionally high-earning professionals are losing housing access,” the report said. “Unaffordability is a strong and debilitating common factor throughout the United States.”
NHC studied affordability in five U.S. markets using a theoretical workplace to understand how unaffordability cuts across professions and geographies. The study uses data from NHC’s Paycheck to Paycheck database to estimate the annual salary needed to sustainably own or rent a home in 390 metropolitan areas compared to the median annual salary for nearly 300 occupations.
In Asheville, North Carolina, a person must earn $59,840 to afford a one-bedroom and $67,200 to afford a two-bedroom apartment, up $28,000 and $27,000 from 2019, respectively. Home prices in the market have followed similar patterns. A buyer needed more than double the income necessary five years ago to afford a typical home, reaching a salary of $143,507 today, compared with $70,678 in 2019.
The impact on working families is devastating, with construction laborers and electricians priced out of the rental market and civil engineers priced out of the homeownership market. Of the 269 occupations tracked in Asheville in 2024, only 66 could afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment, and 97 could afford a one-bedroom. The only occupations that earned enough to purchase a home were architectural and engineering managers, computer and information systems managers, dentists, family medicine physicians and general internal medicine physicians.
Boise, which has generally been considered affordable, is not immune to rapidly rising housing costs. The price for a typical home rose from $297,431 in 2019 to $480,411 in 2024. That pushed the income needed to purchase a home from $77,928 in 2019 to $161,173 in 2024, a 106% increase.
The report looked at salaries for employees at a standard middle school in the market and found that none could comfortably afford to buy a home in 2024. Librarians earning $47,000 could barely afford rent on a one-bedroom apartment. Only three occupations could afford to purchase a home in Boise: dentists, personal financial advisors and architectural and engineering managers.
Increased building helped keep housing relatively affordable across Texas relative to salaries, but working families still feel the impact of rising housing prices in Houston. The typical home price in the market reached $312,062 in 2024, up nearly $91,000 from 2019. That requires a six-figure salary and prices many occupations out of homeownership there. Looking at typical auto shop employees in the market, only sales managers earn enough to afford to buy a typical home. Many auto-related employees who could rent five years ago would struggle at today’s prices, said the report.
Looking at a theoretical law firm in Tampa, NHC found that paralegals and legal assistants making $62,420 per year could only comfortably afford to rent a one-bedroom apartment, although they could afford to rent a larger unit just five years ago. Only 11 of 284 occupations in the market could afford to purchase a home and only 64 of those occupations could afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment. In the law firm scenario, only human resources managers and lawyers can afford housing payments without being cost-burdened, the report found.
Finally, in Seattle, which has been an expensive housing market for years, even occupations that traditionally require professional degrees are not producing salaries high enough for employees to live affordably. A dentist earning a median salary of $208,810, for example, does not earn enough to purchase a typical home in the market. Hygienists and medical and health services managers, despite both making over six figures since 2021, are unable to achieve homeownership, while secretaries, dental assistants and billing employees have not been able to afford a one-bedroom apartment in Seattle since 2019.
Not one of the 285 tracked occupations could afford to purchase a home in Seattle in 2024, despite nearly a quarter of them earning over six figures a year, according to NHC.
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