The fair ranking
Which metros are the least affordable, once you hold constant what people earn there?
The raw ranking sorts metros by the price of the median home. The adjusted ranking sorts them by the payment on that home as a share of the local median household income, so a metro where homes are expensive because incomes are high is compared on what its own households face. Every rank carries an interval from 10,000 Monte Carlo draws over the census margins of error, with the index held fixed; 382 metropolitan areas are ranked in 2024 and 142 micropolitan areas are excluded, because the one year release reaches only the largest of them.
The ranking changes when you hold constant what people earn there: 17 of the 20 largest metros move beyond their intervals. Less affordable than their price says: Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater from 106 to 90; Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach from 33 to 22; Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim from 7 to 2. More affordable: St. Louis from 223 to 307; Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington from 114 to 195; Washington-Arlington-Alexandria from 25 to 102.
The 20 largest metros ranked by the price of the median home and by the payment share of local income, 2024
real:fhfa+acs+pmms
The largest metros, raw beside adjusted
| Metro | Households | Median home | Median income | Payment share | Low | High | Raw rank | Adjusted rank | Interval | Moves |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 4,583,939 | $984,121 | $96,405 | 71.3% | 70.4% | 72.2% | 7 | 2 | 1 to 4 | yes |
| San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA | 1,185,092 | $985,575 | $109,132 | 63.1% | 61.7% | 64.5% | 6 | 8 | 6 to 10 | no |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 1,770,425 | $1,161,939 | $135,590 | 59.9% | 58.6% | 61.2% | 2 | 10 | 10 to 12 | yes |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 7,486,828 | $709,339 | $99,852 | 49.6% | 49.1% | 50.2% | 18 | 21 | 18 to 24 | no |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 2,382,154 | $570,254 | $80,625 | 49.4% | 48.6% | 50.2% | 33 | 22 | 18 to 25 | yes |
| Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 1,658,652 | $747,400 | $112,388 | 46.4% | 45.2% | 47.8% | 15 | 27 | 24 to 33 | yes |
| Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA | 1,484,661 | $601,161 | $91,013 | 46.1% | 45.4% | 46.9% | 29 | 28 | 25 to 33 | no |
| Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH | 1,970,240 | $724,836 | $117,825 | 43.0% | 41.9% | 44.1% | 16 | 41 | 35 to 47 | yes |
| Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO | 1,265,606 | $625,144 | $108,046 | 40.4% | 39.4% | 41.4% | 23 | 52 | 47 to 61 | yes |
| Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ | 1,967,378 | $482,839 | $90,133 | 37.4% | 36.7% | 38.1% | 58 | 70 | 65 to 80 | yes |
| Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL | 1,377,328 | $400,907 | $78,275 | 35.8% | 34.7% | 36.9% | 106 | 90 | 76 to 100 | yes |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 2,415,530 | $619,214 | $126,244 | 34.3% | 33.7% | 34.8% | 25 | 102 | 96 to 113 | yes |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 2,390,346 | $409,790 | $92,344 | 31.0% | 30.5% | 31.5% | 96 | 147 | 139 to 157 | yes |
| Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 2,505,818 | $402,523 | $90,850 | 30.9% | 30.4% | 31.5% | 104 | 149 | 139 to 159 | yes |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 3,012,855 | $393,024 | $92,733 | 29.6% | 29.0% | 30.2% | 113 | 172 | 158 to 180 | yes |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 3,690,402 | $365,617 | $90,770 | 28.1% | 27.7% | 28.5% | 131 | 191 | 184 to 205 | yes |
| Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI | 1,508,526 | $391,204 | $97,928 | 27.9% | 27.3% | 28.5% | 114 | 195 | 185 to 213 | yes |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 2,768,708 | $313,177 | $81,417 | 26.9% | 26.4% | 27.3% | 174 | 216 | 209 to 232 | yes |
| Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI | 1,777,768 | $284,812 | $76,403 | 26.0% | 25.5% | 26.6% | 204 | 238 | 225 to 253 | yes |
| St. Louis, MO-IL | 1,178,246 | $271,172 | $81,679 | 23.2% | 22.6% | 23.8% | 223 | 307 | 289 to 318 | yes |
Source: FHFA index anchored to the census, with Freddie Mac rates (real); model: monte_carlo; population: every metropolitan area present in both the index and the census release of 2024 (382 metros); micropolitan areas excluded; as of 2026-10-23.
The specification
payment share at the local median income; affordable share by bracket interpolation 10000 Monte Carlo draws over the income and anchor value margins, index held fixed.
Plan e23fc6df73f96272, registered before the estimate ran on the real metros. The rank correlation between the raw and adjusted rankings is 0.94; the mean absolute rank change is 29.1 places and the largest is 171, for Lexington Park, MD (from 72 to 243). The affordable share, the share of local households whose income clears the payment on the median home at the 30% line, runs from 11% to 75% across the 382 metros with income brackets, median 53%.
Proven on the simulator first
On simulated metros where the true payment share ranking is known and the expensive metros are given the high incomes on purpose, the adjusted ranking's rank correlation with the truth averaged 0.956 against 0.890 for the raw ranking, over 24 conditions and 20 seeds each. The bracket interpolation behind the affordable share missed the exact share by 0.4 pts on average.
What the housing economist would push back on
The median income is not the buyer income: in a metro where buyers earn twice the median, the payment share of the median household overstates what the people who actually buy face, and chapter 6 measures that ratio from the loans. The index has no margin, so the interval understates what a thin market's index carries. Metros that lost their one year census coverage drop out of the ranking in that year rather than being carried.