The housing affordability crisis is much worse in the north of the country than in the south, a new study by LendingTree reveals, with metropolitan areas in Texas, North Carolina, Louisiana and Georgia offering first-time homebuyers the best opportunity to step onto the property ladder this year.
Those hoping to buy a home in the Pacific Northwest, on the other hand, faced many more hurdles—including a lack of available housing and generally higher prices.
Why It Matters
The entire country is in the midst of a critical situation regarding housing affordability that has hit first-time homebuyers particularly hard, with historically elevated mortgage rates and rising costs keeping many on the sidelines of the market. While inventory is finally rising across the country, giving homebuyers more options and more negotiating power, prices are still rising at the national level and mortgage rates are still hovering around the 7-percent mark.
Prospective homebuyers, however, face a wildly different situation in the market depending on where they are trying to buy a property. Southern states like Florida and Texas, which experienced a boom during the pandemic, built more new homes than anywhere else in the country—and this surge in inventory is now adding downward pressure on prices. But in the Northeast and the Northwest, where the housing shortage is still acute, homebuyers are unlikely to see prices going down this year.
What To Know
Online consumer platform LendingTree analyzed vacancy rates, housing unit approvals, home value-to-income ratios and changes in those ratios for the 100 largest U.S. metros to determine where the housing crisis is worst and best…