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DC Has the 12th Least-Affordable Housing Market in North America

  • November 27th 2017

by Nena Perry-Brown

DC Has the 12th Least-Affordable Housing Market in North America: Figure 1
A home that sold in Shaw earlier this year.

While home price growth in DC proper seems to have slowed as 2017 winds down, the housing market in the city still has a relatively high barrier for entry for those with modest means. Now, a new study zooms out even further to show just how burdensome the market is.

Point2 Homes’s new study on housing affordability concludes that the District has the 12th least affordable real estate market in North America out of the 50 most-populous cities. With a median sales price of $570,000 and a median family income of $75,628, DC’s affordability ratio comes in at 7.5, qualifying the city’s market as “severely unaffordable” by the International Housing Affordability Survey’s standards.

Vancouver is by far the least affordable market on the continent, with an affordability ratio of 17.3; Manhattan comes in second with a ratio of 15.6. Using census data, the affordability ratio is calculated by dividing the median sales price by the median family income.

Correction: A previous version of this article erroneously stated that Vancouver’s housing prices are reasonable; rather, the median home prices in Vancouver are lower than those in Manhattan and San Francisco.

See other articles related to: affordability, housing market, housing prices

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/dc_has_the_12th_least-affordable_housing_market_in_north_america/13292.

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