The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) now has data for Q2 of the year for its Housing Opportunity Index, which measures affordability of homes compared to median income. The US adjusted median income is currently $72,900. With these earnings, 59.6% of home sales were affordable in Q2 of 2020. This is down from 61.3% in Q1. This downward trend is largely expected, though, since the overall direction of movement has been down since NAHB introduced the Housing Opportunity Index in 2012, with occasional ups and downs. At its inception, the value was 78.8%.
What causes affordability to go down? The index looks at three factors: mortgage interest rates, median incomes, and home prices. Since interest rates are at historic lows right now, they’re not the culprit for falling affordability. Home prices are still rising more quickly than the median income, despite the rate of increase for home prices dropping in the last several years. Not to mention much of the recent boost to median income is not actually a result of increased wages, but rather job losses — since unemployed persons are not included in the median income figure, low-wage earners losing their jobs due to the recession and COVID-19 has artificially inflated the median income.
Photo by Diane Helentjaris on Unsplash
More: https://journal.firsttuesday.us/homebuilders-housing-opportunity-index-declines/73810/