housing affordability

A Blunt Tool

How can one measure the housing affordability of a city or region?  One common option is to focus on a region’s median home price (or the median home price divided by median income).  I’ve used this method myself, and regional medians will often be the best tool available. But sometimes, this method leads to absurd results.  For example, the median home price for metropolitan Atlanta is $150,000, which makes Atlanta seem like a remarkably affordable housing market.(1)

May 5, 2010 - Michael Lewyn

How Affordable is Your City?

CNN ranks 10 American cities according to housing affordability, and finds that foreclosures, median incomes and the availability of developable land all influencing housing affordability.

February 18, 2010 - CNN Money

Planning Foreclosures

 As the economy continues to lumber through the most protracted period of recession since the early 1980s, the financial sector has received the brunt of the blame. It’s been easy for the planning profession to distance themselves from what seem at first to be macroeconomic trends. That view, however, is becoming increasingly difficult to uphold.

March 7, 2009 - Samuel Staley

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