Middle-Income Households Can Afford Just 23% of Listings Today

 


Check Out This Weeks Newsletter

A new NAR and Realtor.com report finds middle-income households can access only 23% of listings nationwide, and the U.S. needs 311,000 more homes priced under $261,000 to close the gap.

More listings have hit the market over the past year, and that’s great news. The problem? Most of those listings are priced in a range that leaves a huge chunk of buyers out in the cold.

A new joint report from the National Association of REALTORS and Realtor.com has the numbers to back that up. They built something called the Listing-Income Alignment Score, a metric designed to measure how well the homes available for sale actually match what local households can afford to spend.

Long story short: things are getting better, but the difference between what’s for sale and what buyers can afford to buy is still wide enough to keep a lot of people on the sidelines. 

Here’s what the data shows, and what it means for the conversations you’re having with clients right now.

What the Listing-Income Alignment Score Measures

The Listing-Income Alignment Score is a new way to measure something the industry has been feeling for a while but struggling to quantify. It looks at how well the distribution of home listings in a given market matches the income distribution of local households.

A score of 100% means the homes available for sale are proportionally distributed across all income levels. The further below 100% you go, the more inventory is skewed toward higher price points, leaving fewer options for buyers at the lower end of the income spectrum.

Here’s where things stand nationally as of March 2026:

  • Current score: 74.9%

  • One year ago: 66.7%

  • Pre-pandemic baseline: 84.4%

There’s obvious progress from a year ago (about 8 percentage points). But the current score is still a long way from where the market was before the pandemic. 

Realtor.com chief economist Danielle Hale explained it this way: 

“The improvement in our Listing-Income Alignment Score over the past year is encouraging, but the data makes clear that more inventory alone won’t be enough to unlock the housing market. A true recovery requires homes at the right price points. 

“Until the supply of entry-level and middle-market homes grows to meet demand, many buyers will continue to find the market out of reach despite headline improvements in affordability and inventory.”

Where Middle-Income Buyers Are Getting Left Behind

When the report talks about middle-income households, it’s referring to households earning around $75,000 a year. That’s a massive slice of the country. Right now, they can only access about 23% of listings nationwide.

In a balanced market, that number would be 44%. Here’s what it would take to get there:

  • 311,000 additional listings priced below $261,000 would need to hit the market

  • $261,000 is the ceiling of what middle-income households can afford to spend

Getting there would require a serious change in what’s actually getting built. 

New construction has been trending toward higher price points for years, and the existing homes that would naturally fill that range are staying off the market as owners hold onto low mortgage rates they locked in before 2022.

The result is a market where inventory is growing, but not in the places where demand is actually concentrated. 

And how much your clients are feeling this has a lot to do with where you’re working. 

Where the Market Stands by Metro

The most aligned markets in the country right now are concentrated in the Midwest, where home prices have stayed more closely tied to local incomes:

  • Toledo, Ohio: 107.4%

  • St. Louis, Mo.: 106.0%

  • Akron, Ohio: 105.0%

  • Pittsburgh, Pa.: 102.6%

  • Detroit, Mich.: 102.4%

On the other end of the spectrum, California dominates the list of most constrained markets:

  • Los Angeles, Calif.: 39.4%

  • San Diego, Calif.: 45.0%

  • Oxnard, Calif.: 46.8%

  • Providence, R.I.: 50.5%

  • Boise City, Idaho: 53.2%

Of the 100 largest metros in the country, 99 either improved year-over-year or held flat. The only market to lose ground was Madison, Wis., which fell nearly 8 percentage points to 63%.

The markets that made the biggest jumps were mostly places that saw the steepest price run-ups during the pandemic:

  • Lakeland, Fla.: +18.3 percentage points

  • McAllen, Texas: +14.7 percentage points

  • Las Vegas, Nev.: +14.0 percentage points

  • New Orleans, La.: +13.2 percentage points

  • Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fla.: +13.0 percentage points

Those gains are coming from price corrections, not a surge in affordable inventory. 

When a client asks why things are looking up in certain markets, that’s the honest answer. 

 

Housing Market - May 26, 2026 - Sarah Lentz

 

 

https://nowbam.com/middle-income-households-can-afford-just-23-of-listings-today/

 

Confused about the Real Estate market?

If You Don’t Know – “Just Ask Chuck”

@ChuckBarberini   #ChuckBarberiniRealEstate 

@ChuckBarberiniRE #JustAskChuck

https://dot.cards/chuckbarberini

#MartinezRealEstate

 

 

 

Location: Martinez, CA 94553, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In times of uncertainty, real estate transparency* is more critical than ever

Image
Markets that lead in transparency are the ones pulling further ahead through investments in AI and technology integration, data availability, and sustainability.  That’s according to JLL and LaSalle’s (NYSE: JLL) biennial, proprietary Global Real Estate Transparency Index (GRETI), which measures market transparency to guide decisions on real estate investment, development, and occupancy across 89 countries and territories worldwide. *Note: The term “real estate transparency” refers to the availability and reliability of information about real estate markets, including data on— Property prices Transaction processes Legal frameworks Environmental impacts Market fundamentals Transparency Improvements and Regional Highlights While real estate transparency has improved, for the most part, since JLL’s 2022 report, Europe remains the most transparent. Top improvers in 2024 include India, the U.S., France, Australia, and Canada, while Singapore made the “Highly Transparent” list for the fi...
Read more

Dinner with Friends

Image
  “Just Thinking” I’ve written several times about growing up in San Francisco—what a great place it was, and at such a great time. I’ve often lamented how much “The City” has changed over the years. Sure, some of that is looking back with rose-colored glasses, but the crime, homelessness, and exodus of the tax base cannot be overlooked. Last night, however, I was reminded how fortunate I am to have my roots in San Francisco. I had dinner at Harris' The San Francisco Steakhouse, whose head chef and owner is a grammar school mate. I was joined by seven classmates from high school. Fifty years later, and the ties from our youth are still strong, built on a bond of shared experiences. I really need to give a shout-out to Chef Mike and the whole Buhagiar family. If you haven’t had the opportunity to dine at Harris’ Restaurant, you truly owe it to yourself to try it out. The restaurant was founded in 1984 by Ann Harris, after her husband, Jack Harris, the founder of Harris Ranch, passed...
Read more

February 20th ... A Day of Reflection

Image
  “Just Thinking” I had a sad day yesterday; I attended the funeral of my friend and high school classmate F.X. Crowley. It was a beautiful celebration of his life, there was a packed house at St. Ignatius Church on the USF campus. His children all gave beautiful, heartfelt talks about their favorite memories of times spent with their father. I was so happy to see so many of my fellow classmates, to catch up, to tell stories of our times with F.X. and to talk about our great sense of loss. Yesterday was also the 6 th  anniversary of my Dad’s passing, so when I got home, I had a lot to reflect on. I thought a lot about legacy, about family and about how fleeting our time is. I went through some of my journals and notebooks and came across one of my favorite poems, “If” by Rudyard Kipling, although addressed to a young man, it is really a father sharing his life’s learned lessons to a child , a beautiful testament of his love and legacy. If you can keep your head when all about ...
Read more