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The typical American family needs to spend 38% of its household income to make a mortgage payment on a median priced new single-family home, according to the latest quarterly Cost of Housing Index data from the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). For low-income families, that percentage increases substantially to 77% of their earnings.

NAHB determined that the typical family was severely cost-burdened (must pay more than 50% of their income on a median-priced existing home) in eight out of 176 major metro markets during the first quarter. In 80 other markets, such families are cost-burdened (need to pay between 31% and 50%). There are 88 markets where the Cost of Housing Index was 30% of earnings or lower.

California’s San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara market was the most severely cost-burdened market during the first quarter, where 84% of a typical family’s income is needed to make a mortgage payment on an existing home. This was Urban Honolulu (73%), Florida’s Naples-Marco Island metro (71%) and California’s San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad (70%) and San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley (69%). NAHB added that low-income families would have to pay between 138% and 168% of their income in all five of those markets to cover a mortgage.

By contrast, the Illinois metros Peoria and Decatur tied as the least cost-burdened markets, where families needed to spend just 14% of their income to pay for a mortgage on an existing home.

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“With a nationwide shortage of roughly 1.5 million homes, the lack of housing units is the primary cause of growing housing affordability challenges,” said NAHB Chief Economist Robert Dietz. “Policymakers at all levels of government need to enact policy changes that will allow builders to construct more homes, such as speeding up permit approval times, providing resources for skilled labor training and fixing building material supply chains.”

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