Affordable Housing: Is There Enough?

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Introduction

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Overview

“We have a real tragedy unfolding,” Sen. Alfonse M. D'Amato, R-N.Y., told Realtors gathered at their national conference last November. “We may not have GIs coming back from the war, but we have our youngsters” looking for housing. D'Amato pointed to his own daughter as an example of how difficult it is for young married couples to buy their first home: She and her husband had to pay a whopping $240,000 for what he described as “a very modest home.”

But accompanying the news report of D'Amato's dire pronouncement—on the same page of the newspaper, in fact—was a full-color chart showing that nationwide, houses are more affordable today than at any time since 1978. The chart, which depicted the National Association of Realtors' affordability index, indicated that a family earning the median income today has 12 percent more income than is needed to qualify for a loan on the median-priced single family home. In 1982, by comparison, that buyer was at least 30 percent short of the income needed to qualify.