Home Ownership Consumes 31.1 Percent of Average Wage in First Quarter 2020; Home Prices Still Unaffordable in 66 Percent of Local Markets

IRVINE, Calif. – March, 26, 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 first-quarter 2020 U.S. Home Affordability Report, which shows that median home prices in the first quarter of 2020 are unaffordable for average wage earners in 319 of 483, or 66 percent of the U.S. counties analyzed in the report. But that figure is down from 70.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2019 and 69.8 percent from the first quarter of 2019.

The report also shows that owning a median-priced home in the first quarter of 2020 in the United States – costing $252,500 – consumes 31.1 percent of the national average wage. That percentage is down from 31.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2019 and 31.6 percent in the first quarter of 2019, to the lowest percentage since the fourth quarter of 2017, when the average workers were spending 30.8 percent of wages to own a home.

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 3 percent down payment and a 28 percent maximum “front-end” debt-to-income ratio.