The housing market is on the climb.
It’s so expensive that, in some cities, the price of the typical home outweighs the average income by so much that it can take prospective homeowners well over a decade to save the necessary amount for a 20% down payment.
SmartAsset, a financial technology company, has released a new ranking that highlights the high cost of homeownership. Their May 2019 report found the US cities that have the most severely housing cost-burdened households. Here, a “housing cost-burdened household” is defined as one that spends more than 50% of its income on housing — well over the 30% mark that is traditionally recommended.
To determine this list, SmartAsset used data from the US Census Bureau’s 2017 1-year American Community Survey. Within this data, they took the number of severely housing cost-burdened households among homeowners in 126 cities, ranking each city by the percentage of households that spend at least half of their income on housing.
In 38 US cities, 12% (or more) of all households in the city spend at least half of their income on housing. Of these cities, 17 are in California, making it the state with the greatest number of severely housing cost-burdened cities. Florida ranks second, home to five of the most severely housing cost-burdened cities.
Read on to see the 38 US cities where at least 12% of the households are barely affording their homes.
