IRVINE, Calif. – Dec. 31, 2020 — ATTOM Data Solutions, curator of the nation’s premier property database and first property data provider of Data-as-a-Service (DaaS), today released its fourth-quarter 2020 U.S. Home Affordability Report, showing that median home prices of single-family homes and condos in the fourth quarter of 2020 were less affordable than historical averages in 55 percent of counties with enough data to analyze, up from 43 percent a year ago and 33 percent three years ago. Yet rising wages and falling mortgage rates still helped keep median home prices close to affordable for average wage earners across the country.

The report determined affordability for average wage earners by calculating the amount of income needed to make monthly house payments — including mortgage, property taxes and insurance — on a median-priced home, assuming a $100,000 loan and a 28 percent maximum “front-end” debt-to-income ratio. That required income was then compared to annualized average weekly wage data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (see full methodology below, which has changed from earlier reports to account for higher down payments and two-worker households).

Compared to historical levels, 275 of the 499 counties analyzed in the fourth quarter of 2020, or 55 percent, were less affordable than past averages, up from 217 of the same group of counties in the fourth quarter of 2019 and 164 in the fourth quarter of 2017. The fallback came as continued spikes in median home prices of at least 10 percent over the past year in most of the country outpaced the impact of increasing wages and declining mortgage rates to historic lows. Those price increases occurred as the U.S. housing market kept booming despite economic troubles related to the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic.