Single-family home prices are at least five times higher than the median household income in more than a third of the nation's metropolitan areas, a report Harvard released Monday indicates.
The number nearly doubled from 15 markets in 2019 to 39 in 2024, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. Home price-to-income ratios rose in 77 of the 100 metropolitan areas studied, with an overall increase, and in seven markets, costs were eight times higher.
The data comes from the center's annual State of the Nation's Housing report. Analysts calculated single-family home sales prices divided by median household incomes for the most populated metropolitan areas, using 2024 data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the National Association of Realtors and Moody's Analytics.
California dominated the top 10 highest price-to-income ratios:
| RANK | METROPOLITAN AREA | PRICE-TO-INCOME RATIO |
| 1. | San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, California | 12 times higher |
| 2. | Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, California | 10.8 times higher |
| 3. | San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, California | 10.5 times higher |
| 4. | Urban Honolulu | 10.3 times higher |
| 5. | San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, California | 9.4 times higher |
| 6. | Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, California | 8.5 times higher |
| 7. | Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, Florida | 8.0 times higher |
| 8. | New York-Newark-Jersey City (New York and New Jersey) | 7.3 times higher |
| 9. | Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, Washington | 6.9 times higher |
| 10. | Boston-Cambridge-Newton (Massachusetts and New Hampshire) | 6.6 times higher |
"When home prices are this high, only the households with the highest incomes can dream of homeownership," said Peyton Whitney, a research analyst at the center and the author of the article. "It makes the hurdle of saving for a down payment so much less attainable."
All of these metropolitans share a common thread — a lack of inventory. Demand had piled up for years in these communities and construction failed to keep up, exacerbating the disparity between prices and household earnings, according to the report.
Policy can help incentivize and pave the way for much-needed supply, experts say. The University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization found in its 2025 factbook issued in May that 1 in 4 households in that state can afford to buy a house and that county and state regulations were exacerbating the issue.
In Florida, legislators moved forward with the multilayered Live Local Act in 2023 to boost housing. One component includes tax exemptions for socio-economically diverse apartment rental buildings, said Andrea Heuson, a finance professor at the University of Miami's Herbert Business School and its academic director of real estate programs. A percentage of residences must have rent caps to appeal to workforce housing tenants.
What does that mean for homebuying?
It's meant to help the community's working class — nurses, police officers, teachers — to afford to stay, Heuson said. "This is a way to cut down on living costs for those saving for their first house," she said.
But there are other signs of hope.
Home prices are hitting their ceilings in some expensive locales, Whitney said. "In a lot of these high-cost western and southern markets or in general where home prices are far higher than incomes, we’ve hit the ceiling for this measure of affordability."
Slowing price growth, she said, indicates a stabilization, rather than a worsening, of the price-to-earnings disparity.