Home affordability
The Houston area ranks just behind Atlanta in the 10 fastest-growing metros.
Raise your hand if you know someone who recently moved to Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth or Houston. A lot of hands went up, because those are the three fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the U.S. — and they have relatively affordable home prices.
NerdWallet calculated home affordability for the 10 metro areas that had the most population growth from mid-2016 to mid-2017, the latest data available from the U.S. Census Bureau. Among them, Atlanta had the most affordable home prices this spring and Seattle had the least affordable.
Affordability was estimated by comparing each metro area’s median household income with the monthly principal-and-interest payment for a median-priced single-family home in the second quarter. After a 20 percent down payment, house payments were calculated at an interest rate of 4.71 percent, the average rate for a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage in the second quarter in NerdWallet’s daily mortgage rates survey.
The three most affordable metros for buying a home have two things in common, says Danielle Hale, chief economist for Realtor.com: space to grow and local governments that “are more willing to permit and allow development, too.”
The rankings were compiled using data from the National Association of Realtors, the Census Bureau and NerdWallet.