US housing affordability
by state — 2024 data

In 1980, the typical American home cost about three times the typical annual household income. Today, that number is 4.2× — and in the most expensive states, it is more than double that. Wages have risen, but home prices have risen faster. The gap is widest in the states where most people want to live.

The price-to-income ratio is the clearest single measure of housing affordability. It asks a simple question: if a household saved their entire income and spent nothing else, how many years would it take to buy a typical home in their state today? A ratio below 3.5 is considered affordable by most economists. Above 5 is stressed. Above 7 is a crisis.

But averages mask the real story. The US is not one housing market — it's fifty. West Virginia homes cost $162,600. Hawaii homes cost $839,100. The same country, the same laws, and a gap of more than $676,500.

Hawaii sits at the extreme end of every affordability measure. A typical home costs $839,100 — more than eight times the average annual income. This isn't just expensive by mainland standards. It's the product of a geography-constrained island economy with strict building limits, a large tourism industry, and decades of under-building relative to demand.

California is close behind. At 7.4× years of income, California's housing costs are driven by the same forces — concentrated job growth in a handful of metro areas, decades of zoning restrictions, and a coastline that can't expand. The state has the highest median rent of any state in the country.

Behind those two, a group of states has moved firmly into "stressed" territory: Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Nevada, Massachusetts, Utah, and Idaho. All have seen rapid in-migration over the past decade — from tech workers, remote workers, and people leaving more expensive coastal cities. Prices followed.

Across the US, 45.1% of renters are "cost-burdened" — the term economists use when someone spends more than 30% of their income on housing. Above that threshold, it becomes hard to save for emergencies, let alone a down payment. Nationally, that means nearly half of all renters are in that position.

The most striking case is Florida. Home prices there are moderate by national standards — the typical home costs $359,000, close to the national average. But 56.3% of Florida renters are cost-burdened — the highest rate in the country. Why? Florida has a large population of retirees and seasonal workers on fixed or lower incomes, and rents in Miami, Tampa, and Orlando have risen sharply in recent years. The wages haven't kept up.

Nevada, California, Colorado, and New York round out the worst states for renters. In each case, the mechanism is slightly different — speculation in Las Vegas, tech premiums in San Francisco, ski-town demand in Denver, supply shortage in New York — but the result is the same: renters paying more of their income on housing than is financially sustainable.

Rent burden and eviction rates are the two most-cited measures of housing stress. But they have a blind spot. Eviction data is sparse in rural areas and many Southern counties. And rent burden measures only those who are currently renting — it misses owners who are stretched thin, and people who have already left or never entered formal housing markets.

Debt in collections fills part of that gap. Nationally, the median county has 22.7% of adults with at least one debt in collections — meaning unpaid bills handed to a debt collector. In the bottom tenth of counties, that figure is 12.1% or lower. In the top tenth, it rises above 36.6%. The worst single county in the country is Brooks County, Texas, where 56.3% of adults carry debt in collections.

The South Texas border counties — Brooks, Zapata, Zavala, Jim Hogg, Duval — all sit above 50%. Most have sparse eviction data, which means they would look moderate on a standard stress index. They don't look moderate here. They are some of the most financially distressed communities in the country by the debt measure, and the eviction data simply doesn't exist to confirm what the debt data already signals.

The state-level picture is equally stark. South Carolina ranks worst nationally, with county averages at 36.3% — nearly three times the figure for Minnesota, the lowest-stress state at 12.2%. The five highest-stress states are all Southern: South Carolina, Texas, Georgia, Louisiana, and Alabama. The five lowest are Minnesota, North Dakota, Nebraska, Utah, and South Dakota. This is not a random distribution — it maps directly onto historical patterns of healthcare access, wage floors, and credit market penetration.

Income explains part of the gap — but only part. Counties in the lowest income quintile average 32.2% of adults with debt in collections; counties in the highest quintile average 17.3%. That is a meaningful gradient, but race operates as an independent predictor: the correlation between share of people of colour and debt-stress rate (r = +0.53) is nearly as strong as the correlation with income (r = −0.52), and the two variables are not themselves correlated at county level (r = 0.004). Lower-income places carry more debt regardless of racial composition, and places with higher shares of people of colour carry more debt regardless of income level.

The racial gap shows up directly in the data. Across the 696 counties where the Urban Institute reports both figures, the median debt-in-collections rate for communities of colour is 36.0% against 23.2% for white communities — a 55% difference. Credit card delinquency is 67% higher (8.4% vs 5.1%), auto delinquency 71% higher (8.1% vs 4.7%), and medical debt 43% higher (8.0% vs 5.6%). These gaps appear in counties across all regions — the worst individual gaps are in Montana, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee, not just the South. See the debt analysis page for the full breakdown by type.

This divergence between rent burden and debt stress is sharpest in resort and ski counties. Eagle County, CO (Vail) has a rent burden rank at the 100th percentile nationally — meaning it is tied for the highest in the country — yet its debt-in-collections rate of 7.8% puts it in the 1st percentile. The explanation: housing in resort markets is expensive because demand is high and incomes are high. Residents who can afford Vail-area rents are generally not defaulting on credit card bills. The stress is real, but it is income-driven, not debt-driven.

The counties where all three stress signals align — high rent burden, high eviction rate, and high debt in collections — are concentrated in a specific geography. Of the 58 counties in the top quartile on all three measures, 14 are in Georgia, 9 are in Texas, and 9 are in Virginia. Clayton County, GA tops the combined ranking with an FSI score of 99. Petersburg city, VA — with 44.7% debt in collections, a 100th-percentile eviction rank, and an 87th-percentile rent burden rank — reaches an FSI score of 95.

These are not abstract statistics. They describe places where the formal mechanisms for resolving housing stress — eviction courts, rent assistance programs, credit counseling — are all engaged at the same time, on the same population.

Debt data: Urban Institute Debt in America (July 2024). Financial Stress Index = percentile composite of rent burden, eviction rate, and debt in collections. Coverage requires all three inputs; rural counties with no eviction data are excluded from the FSI but shown on the debt map.

While coastal headlines focus on the affordability crisis, much of America's interior remains genuinely accessible for buyers. The Great Plains and Midwest — Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Indiana, Ohio — have home prices between 2.8 and 3.2 times annual income. These are markets where a middle-income family can still realistically aspire to own a home.

West Virginia is the most affordable state in absolute terms, with a typical home price of just $162,600. Mississippi is second at $169,800. But low prices don't always mean easy affordability — these states also have lower incomes, so the gap is smaller but not always better.

North Dakota stands out as a genuine outlier. Its energy sector generates strong wages, and homes are modestly priced. Only 36.3% of North Dakota renters are cost-burdened — the lowest figure in the country, and one of the few signs that wages can, in some places, still outpace housing costs.

The affordability gap is not closing on its own. The states under the most pressure — Hawaii, California, and the fast-growing Mountain West — would need either sustained wage growth or a building boom large enough to outpace migration, and neither is currently underway. The states still within reach — West Virginia, Iowa, Mississippi, and the Great Plains — hold that position mainly because demand has stayed low, not because policy made housing cheap.

State averages only set the frame. The sharpest divides run inside states — between a metro and its rural counties, between a coastline and an interior. Open the map below to see exactly where your own county sits.