The income needed to purchase a typical U.S. home has increased by 79% in just 6 years

ResiClub is currently fielding two industry surveys. If you’re in one of these groups, we’d love your participation. The results will be published in ResiClub and across some traditional media outlets.

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Here’s the annual U.S. household income needed to purchase the typical valued U.S. home:

Jan. 2020 -> $52,041

Jan. 2021 -> $52,087

Jan. 2022 -> $63,111

Jan. 2023 -> $87,092

Jan. 2024 -> $93,227

Jan. 2025 -> $98,900

Jan. 2026 -> $93,061

While the income needed to buy the median-priced U.S. home is +78.8% higher than it was in January 2020, it’s down -5.9% year-over-year.

Methodology: This Zillow calculation is conservative and assumes a 20% down payment and the homebuyer spends less than 30.0% of their monthly income on the total monthly payment. This is a financed purchase, of course. For typical home value, Zillow economists used the latest Zillow Home Value Index reading.

Click here to view a searchable version of the chart below displaying the analysis in 400 metro area housing markets [best done on a desktop]

Regional housing markets that have experienced outright home price corrections since the end of the Pandemic Housing Boom have seen faster affordability improvements. That said, many of those places—like the Austin, TX metro area—also experienced greater home price overheating during the Pandemic Housing Boom.

How did we get here?

During the Pandemic Housing Boom, housing demand surged rapidly amid ultralow interest rates, stimulus, and the remote work boom. Federal Reserve researchers estimate “new construction would have had to increase by roughly 300% to absorb the pandemic-era surge in demand.” Unlike housing demand, housing supply isn’t as elastic and can't quickly ramp up like that. As a result, the heightened pandemic-era demand drained the market of active inventory and sent national home prices soaring. The typical U.S. home value measured by the Zillow Home Value Index in January 2026 is still a staggering +44.7% greater than in January 2020.

That overheated home price growth, coupled with the ensuing mortgage rate shock, with the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate jumping up from under 3.0% to over 7.0%, created the fastest ever deterioration in housing affordability in 2022. Over the past two years, housing affordability has improved some; however, it still remains challenged.

While the exact hit has varied, this decade’s affordability squeeze across much of the country—just look at the two maps below.

Click here to view an interactive version of the January 2020 map below

Click here to view an interactive version of the January 2026 map below

The challenge, of course, is that incomes haven’t kept up. The gap has narrowed since the end of 2022; however, it’s still wide.

While the annual U.S. household income needed to purchase a typical U.S. home has increased by +78.8% between January 2020 and January 2026, average weekly earnings of U.S. workers have risen by +30.7%, and overall U.S. consumer inflation has grown by +26.0% during the same period.

U.S. existing home sales total 257,000 in February 2026

Since 2000, February has averaged 310,000 U.S. existing home sales.

Simply put, resale turnover remains constrained.

Over the past week, ResiClub paid members got these 3 additional housing research articles:

All 11 of the biggest homebuilders tracked by ResiClub are seeing year-over-year margin compression

Monthly report: Housing market inventory dynamics in 800+ metros, 3,000+ counties, +25,000 ZIPs

Many homebuilder groups—including NAHB—are uneasy with the institutional homebuying ban. Here’s why

Below is a quick topline summary of the main components of the institutional homebuying “ban” passed in the U.S. Senate today. It now heads back to the House.👇