Typical U.S. home now costs 40% of average household income

Buying a typical U.S. home now requires a household income of $116,780, a level that still leaves the average American family short of the mark and spending 40% of its earnings on housing. That is above Redfin’s affordability benchmark of 30%, but it is down from 42% a year earlier, a sign that the market has started to loosen even as it remains far out of reach for many households.

The income needed to afford a home fell 2% from $119,191 a year earlier, and Redfin said April 2026 marked the seventh straight month in which homebuying became more affordable year over year. The income threshold had peaked at about $122,000 in mid-2025, underscoring how quickly borrowing costs and prices had pushed ownership beyond the reach of ordinary wages. In an earlier Redfin reading, buyers needed $111,252 a year to afford the typical U.S. home, down 4% from a year earlier, showing the same broad easing that has taken hold into 2026.

Even with that improvement, the gap remains wide. The typical American household earns an estimated $86,185, roughly $29,000 less than what is needed to afford the median-priced home for sale. In March 2026, the national median home sale price was $436,523, up 1.2% from a year earlier, while the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate stood at 6.2%. Those figures help explain why monthly costs continue to strain budgets despite some relief from the peak levels of 2025.

The pressure is far from evenly spread across the country. In San Jose, California, a buyer needs to earn $374,241 a year to afford the typical home for sale, the highest figure in Redfin’s metro analysis. Pittsburgh looks dramatically different: buyers there need only $66,168, while the typical local household earns $82,188, giving Pittsburgh residents the most room in their budgets. Redfin has also said the rent-versus-buy gap is shrinking in every major metro except Detroit, a sign that softer prices and rising inventory in many Sun Belt boomtowns are beginning to narrow the divide.

The long view shows just how much the market has shifted. In 2024, a median-income household needed to spend 41.8% of earnings to buy the typical home. In 2022, that figure was 42.2%. The latest numbers still point to a housing market where ownership remains mathematically unattainable in many places, but the direction of travel has finally started to bend back toward affordability.