Exceptionally low interest rates reportedly helped ensure a slight gain in nationwide housing affordability amid relatively stable house prices in the final quarter of 2012, according to the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index (HOI). In all, 74.9% of homes sold between the beginning of October and end of December 2012 were affordable to families earning the U.S. median income of $65,000. This was up nearly a percentage point from the 74.1% of homes sold that were affordable to median-income earners in last year’s third quarter.
“The most recent housing affordability data should be encouraging to many prospective home buyers, because it shows that homeownership remains within reach of median-income consumers even as most local markets appear to be on a recovery path,” said Rick Judson, NAHB chairman and a home builder from Charlotte, N.C. He noted that the most recent reading of the NAHB/First American Improving Markets Index found that 259 out of 361 metros currently qualify as improving, including representatives from all 50 states and the District of Columbia.