The prospects for millions of renters to be able to afford to buy a median-priced home of their own within a reasonable period of time are growing dimmer, according to a new report from CBRE. Some 1.8 million households will be forced to continue to rent, raising multifamily occupancy rates for years to come and driving rents even higher, the CRE firm noted.
Indeed, the share of renters who can afford a median-priced home dived from 17% in 2019 to 12.7% this year.
Of the 69 markets tracked by CBRE, the metros worst affected will be Boston and Washington, DC, each of which includes 60,000 households where affordability will diminish. Metros where more than 30,000 renters each will be priced out of homebuying include Los Angeles, Houston, Philadelphia, Tampa, Austin and Phoenix. As many as 20,000 each may be forced to continue to rent in Orlando, Atlanta, Newark, Seattle, Dallas, Minneapolis, Orange County, New York, Portland and San Diego. And 10,000 will face the same fate in Oakland, Miami, Chicago, Denver and San Antonio.
Two metros – Detroit and San Francisco -- escaped the same dismal prediction as renters there “proportionally increased their ability to afford the median-priced home over time.”
“Much of the drop in affordability can also be gauged by the increased premium required to make a monthly mortgage payment vs. the average market rent,” the report stated. “The premium represents the cost of owning a home (including mortgage, insurance, taxes and general maintenance) versus the cost to rent each month.”
Orange County saw its premium nearly double to 303%, as of Q2 2025, from 160% in 2019. Buying premiums in Austin and Los Angeles also increased significantly, while some markets (e.g., San Francisco and Chicago) changed very little from 2019.
A graph accompanying the report illustrates the difficulty. Between 2Q 2003 and 2Q 2005, multifamily effective rents rose gradually from around $1,200 to $2,228. In the same period, new monthly mortgage payments rose from around $2,500 to almost $4,643, more than double that of the average monthly rent.
On a more positive note, CBRE noted that “while the buying premium remains significantly elevated over pre-pandemic levels in almost every U.S. market, it is slowly starting to drop. The national average buying premium is at 108% as of Q2 2025, down from 128% at year-end 2023 but still well above the 68% pre-pandemic average.”
On the other hand, CBRE estimated that a 20% down payment for the purchase of a home would cost the equivalent of four years of the average apartment rent – or more than eight years in the most expensive markets like Orange County.
An accompanying table shows significant declines between 4Q 2019 and 2Q 2025 in the percentage of renter households that can afford a home. In almost all cases, the percentage was much lower this year. And in some others, the decline was dramatic. For example, in Albuquerque, the percentage dropped by more than half from 21.1% to 9.6%, and similar plunges occurred in Hartford, Kansas City and Las Vegas, among others.
However, there is no immediate solution in sight. “Closing the affordability gap between renting and homeownership will require a combination of declining home prices, lower interest rates, rising incomes, and strong rent growth. This will take years to play out,” commented Matt Vance, CBRE America’s head of multifamily research.
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