A first-time homebuyer must earn roughly $64,500 per year to afford the typical U.S. “starter” home, up 13 percent ($7,200) from a year ago, according to a new report from Redfin.
Redfin said that’s due to the one-two punch of higher mortgage rates and higher home prices.
The typical starter home sold for a record $243,000 in June, up 2.1 percent from a year earlier and up more than 45 percent from before the pandemic. Average mortgage rates hit 6.7 percent in June, up from 5.5 percent the year before and from just under 4 percent before the pandemic.
Prices for starter homes continue to tick up because there are so few homes for sale, often prompting competition and pushing up prices for the ones that do hit the market, Redfin said.
New listings of starter homes for sale dropped 23 percent from a year earlier in June, the biggest drop since the start of the pandemic. The total number of starter homes on the market is down 15 percent, also the biggest drop since the start of the pandemic. Limited listings and still-rising prices, exacerbated by high mortgage rates, have stifled sales activity, according to Redfin. Sales of starter homes dropped 17 percent year-over-year in June.
“Buyers searching for starter homes in today’s market are on a wild goose chase because in many parts of the country, there’s no such thing as a starter home anymore,” Redfin Senior Economist Sheharyar Bokhari in a release said. “The most affordable homes for sale are no longer affordable to people with lower budgets due to the combination of rising prices and rising rates. That’s locking many Americans out of the housing market altogether, preventing them from building equity and ultimately building lasting wealth. People who are already homeowners are sitting pretty, comparatively, because most of them have benefited from home values soaring over the last few years. That could lead to the wealth gap in this country becoming even more drastic.”
Home prices shot up during the pandemic due to record-low mortgage rates and remote work, and now rising mortgage rates are exacerbating the affordability crisis, especially for first-time buyers.
A person looking to buy today’s typical starter home would have a monthly mortgage payment of $1,610, up 13 percent from a year ago and nearly double the typical payment just before the pandemic. Average U.S. wages have risen 4.4 percent from a year ago and roughly 20 percent from before the pandemic, not nearly enough to make up for the jump in monthly mortgage payments.
San Francisco, Austin, Texas, and Phoenix are the only U.S. metros where starter-home buyers need less income than they did a year ago, according to Redfin.
A homebuyer in San Francisco must earn $241,200 to afford the typical “starter” home, down 4.5 percent ($11,300) from a year earlier. Austin buyers must earn $92,000, down 3.3 percent year-over-year, and Phoenix buyers must earn $86,100, down about 1 percent.
Those are also the metros where prices of starter homes have declined most, with median sale prices down 13.3 percent to $910,000 in San Francisco, down 12.2 percent to $347,300 in Austin, and down 9.7 percent to $325,000 in Phoenix.
Starter-home prices are falling in those three metros after skyrocketing in 2020 and 2021. Bay Area prices soared because buyers used record-low mortgage rates as an opportunity to jump into the expensive market, and Austin and Phoenix prices went wild because of the influx of remote workers moving into those places.
Redfin said starter home prices are down year-over-year in 13 other metros, mostly expensive West Coast markets, with the next-biggest declines in San Jose, Calif. (-8.7 percent to $925,000), Sacramento, Calif. (-7.3 percent to $417,000) and Oakland, Calif. (-7.3 percent to $630,000). Starter-home prices also dropped in Las Vegas, Seattle, Denver, Los Angeles, Portland, Ore., Anaheim, Calif., San Diego, Riverside, Calif., Pittsburgh and Minneapolis.
The income necessary to buy a starter home has risen most in Florida. Fort Lauderdale buyers need to earn $58,300 per year to purchase a $220,000 home, the typical price for a starter home in that area, up 28 percent from a year earlier. That’s the biggest uptick of the 50 most populous U.S. metros.
Next comes Miami, where buyers need to earn $79,500 (up 24.8 percent) to afford the typical $300,000 starter home. Rounding out the top three is Newark, N.J., where buyers need $88,800 (up 21.1 percent) to afford a $335,000 home. Fort Lauderdale, Miami and Newark also had the biggest starter-home price increases, with prices up 15.8 percent year-over-year, 13.2 percent and 9.8 percent, respectively.
Even though starter-home prices have risen most in Florida, they’re still less expensive than a place like Austin, Texas, or Phoenix, where home prices skyrocketed during the pandemic and have since come down some.
According to Redfin, prices are rising in Florida because despite increasing climate risks, out-of-town remote workers and retirees are flocking in. That’s largely due to warm weather and relative affordability; even though prices there soared during the pandemic, homes are still typically less expensive than in places like New York, Boston or Los Angeles. Five of the 10 most popular metros for relocating homebuyers are in Florida.