California housing affordability reaches 10-year low

Thursday, Aug 16, 2018

By Elizabeth Zach, RCAC staff writer

In a decade-long trajectory, increasing home prices and higher interest rates are limiting Californians’ ability to buy a home, according to the California Association of Realtors.

The association’s “Traditional Housing Affordability Index,” or HAI, shows that a minimum annual income of $126,490 was required to buy a $596,730 single-family home earlier this year – figures that are out of reach for many California families, and not just in the San Francisco Bay Area.

“While low housing affordability may be typical in many Bay Area counties, more traditionally affordable areas were at 10-year lows in the second quarter,” according to the Association. “Those that reached the decade-low include Alameda, Merced, Orange, Riverside, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, and Sonoma.”

But some counties, like Madera County and Santa Barbara County, have seen some improvement in affordability this year. Housing affordability, however, decreased across the rest of the Central Valley and Central Coast region. The most affordable California counties in the second quarter of 2018 were Lassen, Kern, Madera, Tehama and Kings.