Miami’s booming housing market may have pushed the metro area within striking distance of the unwelcome lower echelon of California-style affordability.
The median sale price for a home in the Miami area rose to $399,900 in August, a 14 percent increase from the same time last year, according to a report released Thursday by OJO Labs.
With this change and relatively stagnant income growth, Miami’s unaffordability score dropped to the least desirable mark for a metro area located outside California.
The unaffordability score is based on an analysis of an area’s median home price and median household income estimates, which are derived from recent census surveys, OJO said.
As a group, the 78 metros OJO studied became less affordable over the past year as the home market raced to new heights throughout the nation. The national unaffordability score rose 11 percent in that time.
Only three areas in the dataset saw housing become more affordable relative to local income in the last 12 months — Wisconsin’s greater Green Bay area; the cities of Wichita and Hutchinson in Kansas; and Washington, D.C.
On the other side of the spectrum, the Austin area’s unaffordability score increased by 28 percent, one of the largest year-over-year increases of any metro in the country. The median home sale price there reached $450,000 in August, the report said.
Phoenix also saw its affordability move in the wrong direction, an unaffordability score that grew by nearly 20 percent amid 25 percent year-over-year home price growth. Seattle, Tampa and Atlanta were among the other biggest risers in unaffordability.
Despite worsening affordability in other parts of the country, four California metros topped the firm’s list for the priciest homes compared to area incomes. These included Los Angeles; San Diego; the Bay Area cities of San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose; and the broader Monterey area.
These results reflect a year in which the incomes rose in some sectors of the economy, but prices on the home market have grown more quickly. Conditions spurred by the coronavirus pandemic have driven more buyers to purchase homes as for-sale inventory has struggled to keep pace throughout the U.S.
