NAHB recently released its 2025 Priced-Out Analysis, highlighting the housing affordability challenge. While previous posts discussed the impacts of rising home prices and interest rates on affordability, this post focuses on the related U.S. housing affordability pyramid. The pyramid reveals that 70% of households (94 million) cannot afford a $400,000 home, while the estimated median price of a new home is around $460,000 in 2025. The housing affordability pyramid illustrates the number of households able to purchase a home at various price steps. Each step represents the number of households that can only afford homes within that specific price range. The largest share of households falls within the first step, where homes are priced under $200,000. As home prices increase, fewer and fewer households can afford the next price level, with the highest-priced homes—those over $2 million—having the smallest number of potential buyers. Housing affordability remains a critical challenge for households with income at the lower end of the spectrum. The pyramid is based on income thresholds and underwriting standards. Under these assumptions, the minimum income required to purchase a $200,000 home at the mortgage rate of 6.5% is $61,487. In 2025, about 52.87 million households in the U.S. are estimated to have incomes no more than that threshold and, therefore, can only afford to buy homes priced up to $200,000. These 52.87 million households form the bottom step of the pyramid. Of the remaining households who can afford a home priced at $200,000, 23.53 million can only afford to pay a top price of somewhere between $200,000 and $300,000. These households make up the second step on the pyramid. Each subsequent step narrows further, reflecting the shrinking number of households that can afford increasingly expensive homes. It is worthwhile to compare the number of households that can afford homes at various price levels and the number of owner-occupied homes available in those ranges (excludes homes built-for-rent), as shown in Figure 2. For example, while around 53 million households can afford a home priced at $200,000 or less, there are only 22 million owner-occupied homes valued in this price range. This trend continues in the $200,000 to $300,000 price range, where the number of households that can afford homes is much higher than the number of housing units in that range. These imbalances show a shortage of affordable housing. Discover more from Eye On Housing Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

As housing affordability remains a critical challenge across the country, mortgage rates continue to play a central role in shaping homebuying power. Mortgage rates stayed elevated throughout 2023 and early 2024. Recent data, however, shows a modest decline in mortgage rates. Even slight declines can have a significant impact on housing affordability, pricing more households back into the market. New NAHB Priced-Out Estimates show how home price increases affect housing affordability in 2025. This post presents details regarding how interest rates affect the number of households that can afford a median priced new home. At the beginning of 2025, with the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate at 7%, around 31.5 million households could afford a median-priced home at $459,826. This requires a household income of $147,433 by the front-end underwriting standards[1]. In contrast, if the average mortgage rates had remained at the recent peak of 7.62% in October 2023, only 28.7 million households would have qualified. This 62-basis point decline has effectively priced 2.8 million additional households into the market, expanding homeownership opportunities. The table below shows how affordability changes with each 25 basis-point increase in interest rates, from 3.75% to 8.25% for a median-priced home at $459,826. The minimum required income with a 3.75% mortgage rate is $110,270. In contrast, a mortgage rate of 8.25%, increases the required income to $163,068, pushing millions of households out of the market. As rates climb higher, the priced-out effect diminishes. When interest rates increase from 6.5% to 6.75%, around 1.13 million households are priced out of the market, unable to meet the higher income threshold required to afford the increased monthly payments. However, an increase from 7.75% to 8% would squeeze about 850,000 households out of the market. This exemplifies that when interest rates are relatively low, a 25 basis-point increase has a much larger impact. It is because it affects a broader portion of households in the middle of the income distribution. For example, if the mortgage interest rate decreases from 5.25% to 5%, around 1.5 million more households will qualify the mortgage for the new homes at the median price of $459,826. This indicates lower interest rates can unlock homeownership opportunities for a substantial number of households. [1] . The sum of monthly payment, including the principal amount, loan interest, property tax, homeowners’ property and private mortgage insurance premiums (PITI), is no more than 28 percent of monthly gross household income. Discover more from Eye On Housing Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Housing affordability remains a critical issue, with 74.9% of U.S. households unable to afford a median-priced new home in 2025, according to NAHB’s latest analysis. With a median price of $459,826 and a 30-year mortgage rate of 6.5%, this translates to around 100.6 million households priced out of the market, even before accounting for further increases in home prices or interest rates. A $1,000 increase in the median price of new homes would price an additional 115,593 households out of the market. The 2024 priced-out estimates for all states and the District of Columbia and over 300 metropolitan statistical areas are shown in the interactive map below. It highlights the growing housing affordability challenges across the United States. In 23 states and the District of Columbia, over 80% of households are priced out of the median-priced new home market. This indicates a significant disconnect between rising home prices and household incomes. Maine stands out as the state with the highest share of households (91.2%) unable to afford the state’s median new home price of $682,223. High-cost states such as Connecticut and Rhode Island follow closely, with 88.3% and 87.8% of households, respectively, struggling to afford new homes. Even in states with relatively lower median new home prices, affordability remains a major concern. For example, in Mississippi, where the median home price is $275,333, 70.2% of households still find these new homes out of reach. Meanwhile, Delaware, the state with better affordability in the analysis, has a median new home price of $373,666. However, around 58.2% of households in Delaware still struggle to afford a new home. Even modest price increases, such as an additional $1,000, could push thousands more households from affording these median priced new homes. For instance, in Texas, such an increase could price out over 11,000 households. It also shows the 2025 priced-out estimates for over 300 metropolitan statistical areas. The analysis estimates how many households in each metro area earn enough income to qualify for mortgages on median-priced new homes. In high-cost areas like the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA metro area, where new homes largely target high-income Silicon Valley residents, only 10% of all households meet the minimum income threshold of $437,963 required to qualify for a loan on a median priced new home. In contrast, in more affordable metro areas like Sierra Vista-Douglas, AZ, where the median new home price is $150,893, nearly two-thirds of households can afford a median priced new home. While higher home prices generally result in higher monthly mortgage payments and higher income thresholds, the relationship between home prices and affordability is not always linear. Factors like property taxes and insurance payments can also significantly impact monthly housing costs, adding complexity to affordability calculations. The affordability of new homes and together with the population size of a metro area, significantly influence the priced-out impact of a $1,000 increase in new home prices. In metro areas where new homes are already unaffordable to most households, the effect of such an increase tends to be small. For instance, in the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA metro area, an additional $1,000 increase to the home price affects only 259 households, as only 10% of all households could afford such expensive new homes in the first place. Here, the additional price increase only affects a narrow share of high- income households at the upper end of the income distribution, where affordability is already stretched.In contrast, metro areas, where new homes are more broadly affordable, experience a larger priced-out effect. A $1,000 increase in the median new home price affects a larger share of households in the “thicker part” of the income distribution. For example, in the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX metro area, a $1,000 increase in new home price would disqualify 2,882 households from affording a median-priced new home. This is the largest priced-out effect among all metro areas, driven by the combination of relatively moderate home prices and a substantial population base. More details, including priced out estimates for every state and over 300 metropolitan areas, and a description of the underlying methodology, are available in the full study. Discover more from Eye On Housing Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.