Indiana’s affordable homeownership opportunities and home construction activity earned the state the No. 1. Ranking in the second annual Realtor.com Affordability & Homebuilding Report Card report.
Indiana jumped from fourth place in the 2025 rankings to first place this year, earning an A (76.3), the highest score in the nation. Realtor.com cited the state’s $295,810 median home price, which requires the typical household to spend only 28.3% of its monthly income on mortgage payments, well under the 30% threshold that defines affordability. Indiana also earned a Realtors Affordability Score of 0.89 ranks among the highest in the country.
Second place in the ratings went to Iowa (A, 75.8), with the lowest share of income required to purchase a median home (25.4%) and the highest Realtors Affordability Score (0.96) in the nation. Third ranked South Carolina (A, 75.2) was the nation’s building champion with a permit-to-population ratio of 1.96, nearly double its population share, and a rare negative new construction premium, meaning newly built homes are actually 5.7% cheaper than existing ones.
Texas ranked fourth (A-, 71.0), leading all states in raw construction volume and accounting for 14.6% of all building permits issued, far above its 9.3% population share. Fifth ranked North Carolina (B+, 68.6) mirrored South Carolina’s building success, with a permit-to-population ratio of 1.84 and a slightly negative new construction premium of -1.5%, meaning builders are delivering homes priced just below existing inventory.
At the other end of the spectrum, New York ranked last among the states with a score of 8.5 out of 100, which resulted in an F grade. The state’s median listing price of $668,173 consumed 55.2% of a typical household’s income each year, while the permit-to-population ratio of 0.45 showed the state builds at less than half the rate its population share demands — and a 17% year-over-year permitting slowdown made it worse. A 73.9% new construction premium confirmed the homes being built are far out of reach for typical buyers.
New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Hawaii, Connecticut and California all carried F grades for the second consecutive year.
“A year ago, we launched this report to give policymakers a clear benchmark for progress at the state level,” said Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com. “What the 2026 update shows is that the states making real headway are the ones doing both things well — keeping homes within reach of today’s median earners and building enough new supply to meet demand. Indiana’s rise to the top of the class is a textbook example of that balanced approach. Meanwhile, the bottom of the rankings has barely budged, which shows how deep these structural challenges run. With a nationwide housing shortage still near 4 million homes, the gap between America’s best and toughest housing markets isn’t narrowing, it’s growing.”
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