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Harrisburg-Carlisle near top in housing affordability
In the midst of a national housing affordability crisis, the Harrisburg-Carlisle metro area stands out as a bright spot – at least for those who earn median income.
Rising mortgage rates and construction costs, plus a shortage of inventory, helped push housing affordability in the third quarter to its lowest level in more than a decade, according to the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Affordability Index.
From July through September, 37.4% of Americans could afford a new or existing home, which required a median income of $96,300. That’s the lowest reading since NAHB began consistently tracking affordability in 2012 and a decrease from 40.5% in the second quarter.
Harrisburg-Carlisle, however, comes in as the third most affordable major housing market, defined as a metro with a population of at least 500,000.
There, 75.4% of homes for sale are affordable to buyers with a yearly income of $102,700, which is median for that area.
“Rising mortgage rates have clearly been the key cause of declining housing affordability conditions and shelter costs have been the main driver of inflation,” NAHB Chief Economist Robert Dietz said in a release. “And with shelter cost increases driven by a lack of affordable supply and increasing development costs, the best way to tackle America’s growing housing affordability challenges is to enact policies that will allow builders to increase the housing supply.”
Lansing-East Lansing, Michigan, was the country’s most affordable major housing market in the third quarter. In that metro, 79.8% of new and existing homes were affordable to families earning the area’s median income of $97,800.
The Youngstown-Warren-Boardman metro in Ohio and Pennsylvania was second, while rounding out the top five were Indianapolis-Carmel-Anderson, Indiana, and Scranton-Wilkes-Barre.
Paula Wolf is a freelance writer
