In this article
Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →A single worker's pay is enough to buy a typical home in only 14% of the combinations of occupation and metropolitan area that the National Housing Conference examined. The housing group released the finding on Wednesday 7 October 2026 in a report titled "Priced Out: When a Good Job Isn't Enough", and the trade publication Inman reported it the same day.
The report does not ask what a household can afford in general. It asks a narrower and more personal question: taking the wage paid for a given job in a given metro, can the person who does that job buy the typical home there on that pay alone? In most cases the answer was no, and in a large share of the cases where it used to be yes, it no longer is.
Inman's account, written by Jessi Healey, sets the report next to a separate analysis by Zoocasa that looks at the same problem from the household side. The two studies use different incomes, different prices and different loan assumptions, and they are best read one after the other, not blended.
National Housing Conference, "Priced Out: When a Good Job Isn't Enough", released 7 October 2026, as reported by Inman. Figures for 2025.
What the report measured
According to Inman, the National Housing Conference built its test from two public data sets. Wages come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and are those of a single worker in each occupation. Home prices are Zillow's typical home values, taken as at June 2025.
The loan behind the calculation carries an interest rate of 6.77% and a down payment of 10%. Property taxes and insurance are added to the monthly cost, so the test covers more than the repayment of the loan itself. A home counts as affordable when that full cost takes no more than 28% of the worker's gross income, which is income before tax.
Related readBuying property in Dubai: the checks a buyer can run before signingThat line can be turned into a monthly sum. The report puts the income needed to buy a typical home in Cincinnati at US$100,398. Applied to that income, the 28% line allows US$28,111 a year for housing, or about US$2,343 a month. In Atlanta the qualifying income is US$129,005, which under the same line allows US$36,121 a year, or about US$3,010 a month. Those two monthly sums are this article's arithmetic from the report's incomes, not figures printed in the report.
Inman notes that the report was supported by JPMorganChase and Rocket. It also notes that the 14% result is consistent with the previous edition of the same study: the headline share has not moved much, but the detail under it has.
A six-figure income in 193 metros
The sharpest change is in how many places now ask for a six-figure salary. The National Housing Conference counts 193 metros where the income needed to buy a typical home was US$100,000 or more. In 2019 there were 30. That is 163 more metros above the line in six years.
The speed of the rise shows in a second count. In 188 of 372 metros, the income required at least doubled between 2020 and 2025. That is just over half of the metros in that comparison, in five years.
Cincinnati and Atlanta, the two cities whose qualifying incomes Inman quotes, are both on the six-figure side. Cincinnati sits only US$398 above US$100,000. Atlanta sits US$28,607 above Cincinnati.
The report also describes the jobs that fell out of reach. Occupations that could buy a typical home in 2020 and could not in 2025 paid an average salary of US$70,283. At the report's 28% line, that salary supports housing costs of US$19,679 a year, or about US$1,640 a month, again by this article's arithmetic. The point the figure makes is that the jobs pushed out were not low-paid ones.
Related readNew South Wales: what to check before you exchange on a homeNor were they only middle-paid ones. Inman cites two cases from the report at the top of the pay scale: computer and information systems managers in Seattle, and chief executives in Boulder. Both occupations carry median pay above US$200,000 in those metros, and both could afford the typical local home in 2020. Neither could in 2025.
The 14% counts pairings, not people
Each pairing is one occupation in one metro, tested on a single worker's wage. The figure does not say that 14% of workers can buy, and it does not count households with a second income or with savings beyond a 10% down payment.
Where the ground shifted most
The report breaks the change down by region and by state, and the largest falls are not on the coasts.
In the East North Central region, which covers Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin, the share of occupations able to buy a typical home fell by 36.81 percentage points between 2020 and 2025. The National Housing Conference describes that as the steepest drop of any region. Among the states, Ohio recorded the largest decline, at 40.97 points.
These are changes in a share, measured in percentage points, and Inman's account does not give the starting or the finishing level for the region or the state. What the figures do establish is direction and size: across five Midwestern states, more than a third of the scale was lost in five years, and in Ohio about two fifths.
The pattern matters for anyone who has treated the Midwest as the part of the country where an ordinary wage still buys a house. The Zoocasa analysis, covered below, still finds the lowest mortgage burdens in Illinois. The National Housing Conference finds that the same broad region is where single-salary buying power fell fastest. Both can be true: a place can remain cheaper than the rest and still be much harder to buy in than it was.
Related readAfter the BTO ballot in Singapore: booking, fees and key collectionTwo pay cheques, and still short
The report runs the test a second time with two earners in the same occupation. This is the closest it comes to the way many homes are bought, with two incomes behind one loan.
In 2025, two earners doing the same job could afford a typical home in 54% of cases. In 2020 the figure was 81%. That is a fall of 27 percentage points in five years.
The two results sit a long way apart. One salary buys in 14% of pairings; two salaries from the same job buy in 54%. A second income therefore changes the answer in a large number of cases, but it leaves 46% of pairings out of reach even with both partners working in the same occupation.
A worked illustration, using the report's own average: two workers each on the US$70,283 salary of the occupations that lost the ability to buy would have a joint income of US$140,566. That is above the qualifying income the report gives for Atlanta, US$129,005, and well above Cincinnati's US$100,398. One of those salaries alone is below both. The illustration is this article's, built from the report's figures, and real couples will differ in pay, debts and savings.
David M. Dworkin, president and chief executive of the National Housing Conference, is reported by Inman as saying that the problem is not only a housing problem.
A second count, from household income
Inman pairs the report with an analysis by Zoocasa covering 225 metros. Zoocasa starts from the household, not the job. It uses Census Bureau median household income, the National Association of Realtors' second-quarter median prices for existing single-family homes, a down payment of 20% and an interest rate of 7%.
Related readBuying an HDB resale flat in Singapore: from HFE letter to keysIt applies the same 28% line. On that test, mortgage costs came in under 28% of median household income in only 18 of the 225 metros, or 8%. A further 130 metros fell between 28% and 43%. That leaves 77 metros above that band.
At the far end, San Jose had the highest burden, with mortgage costs equal to 103.5% of median household income: more than the whole of a median household's pay. Nine metros stood at 70% or more, and six of those nine are in California.
At the other end, Decatur, Illinois, came in at 19.3% and Peoria, Illinois, at 21.6%. Four of the five most affordable metros in the analysis are in Illinois. Cincinnati and Atlanta, the two cities for which Inman gives a qualifying income from the National Housing Conference, came in at 34.48% and 35.32% on Zoocasa's measure.
Zoocasa analysis of 225 metros, as reported by Inman on 7 October 2026. Census household income, NAR second-quarter existing single-family prices, 20% down, 7% rate.
Why the two studies do not match
A reader who sets the two headline numbers side by side, 14% and 8%, could take them for two estimates of one thing. They are not. One counts occupations within metros; the other counts metros. One uses an individual wage; the other uses the income of a whole household. The loan terms differ as well.
| Assumption | National Housing Conference | Zoocasa |
|---|---|---|
| Income | BLS wage of one worker, by occupation | Census median household income |
| Home price | Zillow typical home value, June 2025 | NAR second-quarter median, existing single-family |
| Down payment | 10% | 20% |
| Interest rate | 6.77% | 7% |
| Affordable when | Cost is within 28% of gross income | Mortgage cost is under 28% of income |
| Headline result | 14% of occupation-metro pairings | 18 of 225 metros |
National Housing Conference report and Zoocasa analysis, both as reported by Inman, 7 October 2026.
The down payment is the assumption that moves a result most visibly from one buyer to the next. The National Housing Conference assumes a buyer who brings 10% of the price; Zoocasa assumes one who brings 20%, and so borrows less against the same home. A buyer with a different deposit, a different rate or other debts will land somewhere else on either scale, which is why neither study can be read as a verdict on one person's position.
What the two share is the 28% line and the direction of the result. Under either method, the typical home passes the test in a small minority of the cases examined.
How it sits with this month's other figures
The report describes 2025. Three releases from the days before it describe the autumn of 2026, each with its own method.
Zillow's September market report, published on 6 October, puts the mortgage payment on a typical home at 34.3% of median income in September 2026. Rent, by the same report, takes 26.3%. On Zillow's figures, then, buying sits above the 28% line and renting below it.
ICE, in figures reported by Inman on 5 October, found that the payment on a median-priced home took 31.7% of median household income in late September, up from 27.6% in January. That is a rise of 4.1 percentage points in about eight months, and it carried the measure from just under the 28% line to above it.
First American, cited by HousingWire on 6 October, estimates that mortgage rates above 7% cut about US$19,000 from the typical borrower's purchasing power. The National Housing Conference ran its test at 6.77% and Zoocasa at 7%.
None of these three sources repeats the occupational test, so they cannot say whether the 14% share has moved since the data were taken. They do show where the household-level measures stood in the weeks before the report came out.
Kooky, from Shaka
Kooky edits Agents Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for real estate professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.
