Housing
The biggest household expense in America, the biggest grievance about modern life, and the single clearest place where decades of policy have tilted the field. Homes cost five years of median income now. They used to cost three.
Years of median US household income to buy the median home. Up from 3.4× in 2000. In major metros it's 7-11×.
Spending more than 30% of income on rent + utilities. Up from 38% in 2001. 28% spend more than half.
Today's 30-year-olds own homes at roughly 38% vs ~48% for Boomers at the same age. Gen X and Millennials also below baseline.
Price-to-income over time
Years of median US household income needed to buy the median existing home. From 1970 to 2000 this ratio was remarkably stable around 3-3.5×. After 2000 it stretched, crashed, and climbed to a new high.
Price-to-income ratio, US
NAR median existing home price ÷ Census median household income
Why it went up. Under-building (~4M units short per JCHS estimates), rate compression through 2020 that was then reversed, institutional single-family purchases post-2020, local zoning that blocks density, and the tax code's preferential treatment of mortgage interest and capital gains on primary residences.
What you can actually afford
The 28% rule: monthly housing costs (principal + interest + taxes + insurance) should not exceed 28% of gross monthly income. Given your income, mortgage rate, and down payment, here's the maximum home price that fits.
Where your budget fits
| Metro | Median home | Price / income | vs your budget |
|---|---|---|---|
San Jose CA | $1.58M | 10.8× | −$1.32M |
Los Angeles CA | $960K | 10.8× | −$698K |
San Francisco CA | $1.21M | 9.1× | −$948K |
San Diego CA | $955K | 9.7× | −$693K |
New York NY | $680K | 7.3× | −$418K |
Boston MA | $730K | 6.9× | −$468K |
Miami FL | $560K | 7.5× | −$298K |
Seattle WA | $770K | 6.7× | −$508K |
Denver CO | $590K | 6.0× | −$328K |
Austin TX | $545K | 5.5× | −$283K |
Phoenix AZ | $450K | 5.2× | −$188K |
Nashville TN | $445K | 5.4× | −$183K |
Washington DC DC | $605K | 4.9× | −$343K |
Atlanta GA | $385K | 4.4× | −$123K |
Dallas TX | $400K | 4.3× | −$138K |
Chicago IL | $305K | 3.5× | −$43K |
Houston TX | $310K | 3.7× | −$48K |
Philadelphia PA | $330K | 3.6× | −$68K |
Detroit MI | $240K | 3.1× | ✓ affordable |
Cleveland OH | $215K | 2.9× | ✓ affordable |
Pittsburgh PA | $225K | 3.0× | ✓ affordable |
St. Louis MO | $245K | 3.1× | ✓ affordable |
Buffalo NY | $255K | 3.7× | ✓ affordable |
Kansas City MO | $285K | 3.4× | −$23K |
Caveats. The 28% rule assumes no other debt. Add student loans or a car payment and your safe budget drops. The calculator uses 1.5% of home value for taxes + insurance, actual values are higher in NJ, TX, IL, and lower in CA, HI. Excludes HOA fees and major repairs. Result is a ceiling, not a target.
Are you rent-burdened?
HUD's definition: if rent + utilities exceeds 30% of gross income, you're "cost-burdened." Above 50% is "severely burdened." The first number increases eviction risk; the second correlates strongly with food insecurity and delayed healthcare.
Half of US renters are cost-burdened or severely burdened, up from 38% in 2001. The rent-to-income ratio is the tightest it's been in the 30 years HUD has tracked it.
Homeownership at age 30, by generation
Homeownership is often treated as a lifecycle milestone, but cohorts don't reach it equally. The gap between Boomers and Millennials at the same age is ~10 points.
The demographic cost
The chain runs in one direction. When young adults can't afford to live independently, they stay in their parents' homes longer. Marriage gets postponed. Cohabitation with roommates substitutes for partnership. Children get delayed, and many of those delayed births never happen. The aggregate is now visible in two numbers: the US total fertility rate has fallen below replacement every year since 2007, and the Census Bureau's projected US population peak has been revised downward by ~40 million people and pulled forward by 20 years. Surveys consistently find Gen Z and younger Millennials want more children than they have or plan to have. The 0.5-child gap, multiplied across a cohort, is what the data below describes.
Pew Research / Census ACS: about 58% of US adults aged 18-24 live in their parents' home, the highest share since the Great Depression. Among 25-29 year-olds the figure is ~26%, vs ~13% in 1980. Pew's 2024 follow-up survey found 36% of young adults living at home cited 'can't afford a place of my own' as the primary reason. Boomers at the same ages reported parental co-residence rates roughly half as high. The forces are housing rent vs entry-level wages, student debt service, and (since 2022) the mortgage-rate doubling that locked older owners into homes they would otherwise have traded down.
US Census Bureau: the median age at first marriage in 2024 was 30.4 for men and 28.6 for women, both record highs. In 1970 the figures were 23.2 and 20.8. The marriage rate per 1,000 adults fell to 6.0 in 2022 (CDC NCHS), the lowest since records began in 1867. Pew (2023) finds that 64% of unmarried adults under 30 cite financial readiness, defined mostly in terms of housing and stable employment, as a precondition they have not met. The delay is not a preference shift; it is a budget constraint.
CDC National Center for Health Statistics: the US total fertility rate fell to 1.62 in 2023, the lowest figure ever recorded for the country. It has been below the 2.1 replacement rate every year since 2007. Births to women under 30 are down 30%+ since 2007; births to women over 35 rose modestly but not enough to offset. Surveys (Pew 2023, Brookings 2024) consistently find young adults wanting more children than they have. The gap between desired and actual fertility is roughly 0.5 children per woman, attributed primarily to housing cost, childcare cost, and student debt. South Korea offers a cautionary endpoint: TFR 0.72 in 2023, the lowest ever recorded for any country, with housing affordability among the most-cited drivers in the demographic literature.
Pew Research 2023 / Harris Poll 2024: 64% of Gen Z (18-26) and 56% of younger Millennials (27-34) report delaying or reconsidering having children due to financial pressure. Top three cited reasons: housing cost, childcare cost, and student debt service. KFF (2024) found 41% of adults under 35 cite housing cost specifically as the reason marriage and family plans are on hold. The pattern is consistent across surveys: stated desired family size is 2.1-2.4 children, stated planned family size is 1.5-1.7. The 0.5-child gap, multiplied across a cohort, is the difference between population stability and decline.
US Census Bureau 2023 projections: US population peaks at approximately 366 million around 2080, then declines. The 2017 projection had peak population at 404M in 2060, still growing. The downward revision is driven primarily by the fertility-rate fall described above; immigration assumptions also fell modestly. Without net immigration, US population would already be in decline. Working-age population (15-64) growth has fallen from 1.5%/yr in the 1990s to 0.2%/yr today, and turns negative in the 2030s on current trajectories. The economic implications are arithmetic: pension systems, healthcare programs, and housing demand all assume a growing tax base the demography no longer provides.
US Census ACS: about 28-30% of US households were single-person in 2024 (up from 13% in 1960), and roughly 40% are 'non-family' (single-person + roommates + unmarried couples). The roommate share specifically (unrelated cohabitants 25-44) doubled from 2003 to 2023 and has been rising fastest in metros where rent-to-income exceeds 35%. The composition shift looks like a lifestyle preference until you cross-reference it with the same surveys' marriage and family aspirations: respondents consistently report wanting partnership and children. Roommate-dense city geographies are not lifestyle choices; they are the visible compromise that lets young adults live where the jobs are.
The rate matters as much as the price
A $400K mortgage at 3% costs $1,686/mo. The same mortgage at 7% costs $2,661/mo. That $975 difference is pure rate. Most of the affordability drop since 2020 is from rates moving, not prices.
30-year fixed mortgage rate
Freddie Mac PMMS annual average
The landlord and the insurer
Two forces the affordability calculator above can't see: who else is bidding for the house (institutional landlords with cheap capital) and whether you can insure the house you buy (in FL, CA, and an expanding list of states, increasingly not at market rates). Both narrow the practical entry path.
Institutional investors (Invitation Homes, American Homes 4 Rent, Progress Residential, Tricon) own roughly 25% of Atlanta's single-family rental market (~72,000 homes). Phoenix has ~33,000 institutional-owned SFH. Concentration is strongest in Sun Belt metros with strong in-migration, where the first-time-buyer pool competes directly with institutional bids backed by cheap wholesale capital.
Invitation Homes alone owns 86,139 US single-family homes, most of them in the same Sun Belt metros above. In Q3 2025, 81% of the company's new acquisitions were built-to-rent homes purchased directly from third-party builders, a pipeline that bypasses the owner-occupier market entirely. Invitation Homes' portfolio grew ~40% through the 2020s; individual homeownership rates in those same metros fell.
Florida's insurer of last resort, Citizens Property Insurance, held ~772,000 policies as of September 1, 2025. Major private insurers (Progressive, Farmers, AAA, Bankers) have scaled back or exited the state since 2020 due to hurricane losses and fraud. Citizens' average premium in 2025 is approximately $4,200, roughly 3× the national average. A 2025 Florida taxpayer-funded reinsurance backstop now sits behind the state-backed insurer's reserves.
The California FAIR Plan (the state's insurer of last resort, like Florida's Citizens) filed in October 2025 to raise premiums by nearly 36% due to wildfire claim exposure. State Farm, Allstate, and Travelers paused new California home-insurance policies in 2023-24; State Farm later non-renewed ~72,000 existing policies in wildfire-exposed zips. The FAIR Plan now carries a meaningfully higher share of California exposure than its statutory design anticipated.
LA, TX, OK, CO, OR, WA, AZ, MT, and NC all now exhibit early-stage indicators of the FL/CA crisis: insurers restricting new policies, non-renewing in high-risk zips, or exiting lines entirely. Climate-driven loss ratios on US home insurance have exceeded 100% in multiple recent years (premiums collected less than claims paid). Mortgage lenders typically require active insurance for the life of the loan; in regions where coverage becomes unobtainable, effectively so does financing.
If you're buying
Don't chase 20% down
The 20% rule was set in an era of 3× price-to-income ratios. At 5× it takes most buyers a decade to save. FHA loans go to 3.5% down; conventional to 5%. PMI adds ~$100-250/mo but gets removed when you hit 20% equity. Often worth the trade to lock in price sooner.
Beat the rate with timing, not luck
Buy when rates are high, refi when they drop. It's the most common advice that's actually useful. Most 30-year mortgages don't last 30 years, average life is ~7 years before refinance or sale. High rates today are not a 30-year sentence.
Buy shelter, not speculation
A primary residence is a consumption good with a forced-savings feature. Treat it that way. If the math vs renting works at current mortgage rates, and only then - buy. If it doesn't, rent and invest the difference.
Location over square feet
Chetty's neighborhood-exposure effect (see /parenting) is the single largest non-compounding lever on your kid's adult income. A smaller home in a better ZIP typically beats a bigger home in a worse one.
If you're renting
Don't assume renting loses
At current price-to-rent ratios (18-25× annual rent in major metros vs a historical norm of 15×), renting + investing the down-payment delta often beats buying on 10-year horizons. Run the math; don't rely on "rent is throwing money away."
Stay mobile
The single biggest financial advantage renters have is portability. Switching jobs every 2-3 years produces larger raises than internal promotions. Being tied to a mortgage in a soft local market limits those moves.
Invest the delta
The phrase "renting is throwing money away" implicitly assumes the money not going into equity disappears. It only does if you don't invest it. At long-run real returns (~7%) a $500/mo difference compounded for 30 years is ~$590K.
Know your leverage
Landlord turnover costs ~1-2 months of rent. If you've been a reliable tenant, a polite negotiation before lease renewal often gets 5-15% off an advertised renewal increase. Rent strikes and tenant unions have also gained legal traction in major cities since 2020.
Not a recommendation for your specific situation. This page is meant to make the structural numbers legible. Your own buy-vs-rent call depends on local price-to-rent ratios, expected tenure, career plans, and tax situation. A fee-only fiduciary planner is worth the $300-800 they charge for one session.
Data vintages. Home prices and incomes use 2024 estimates. Mortgage rates are Freddie Mac PMMS annual averages. Cohort homeownership uses Census HVS. Metro figures use Zillow ZHVI for home values and Census ACS 2023 for incomes.