Recent Trends in Housing Affordability

As of May 2017, rental unaffordability remains near an all-time high, but has improved modestly in many major markets in recent months. Buying a home continues to get more expensive, although homeownership remains somewhat less costly than during the peak of the housing bubble. 

The graphics below provide more detail on two common measures of housing affordability: median rents relative to median incomes and median home prices relative to median incomes. We present data for the California's eight largest metro areas.

Data Sources:

• American Community Survey
• Apartment List
• California Department of Industrial Relations
• Current Population Survey
• Zillow
• Legislative Analyst’s Office calculations and estimates

We thank Apartment List and Zillow for making public the timely home price and rent data used to develop this post.

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