(Bloomberg) — A key measure of US housing affordability worsened for the first time in almost three years, as higher borrowing costs soaked up a bigger chunk of earnings for new homebuyers. <\/p>\n
Most Read from Bloomberg <\/p>\n
Monthly payments on a median-priced $410,700 home accounted for 34% of a typical family’s income in the second quarter of this year, according to data published Thursday by the National Association of Home Builders and Wells Fargo. That’s up from 32% in the first quarter, and it reverses part of the most recent improvement recorded since early 2025. <\/p>\n
Thirty-year mortgage rates climbed steeply in the period, as the US war with Iran drove borrowing costs higher across the economy, and they’re now close to a one-year high at around 6.8%. A 2% increase in median new-home prices during the quarter added to the squeeze, the builders association said <\/p>\n
“Buyers faced high mortgage rates and economic uncertainty, while builders dealt with rising construction costs, unnecessary regulatory burdens and labor shortages,” NAHB Chairman Bill Owens, an Ohio builder, said in a release. <\/p>\n
New-home sales that were hot four years ago have flattened more recently, forcing homebuilders to offer costly sales incentives or so-called buydowns of mortgage rates. A recent Bloomberg Intelligence survey of investment professionals showed 70% expect starts of single-family homes to decline this year. <\/p>\n
The NAHB data is based on a median family income of about $107,000. Households earning half of that amount had to spend 67% of their earnings to cover the same new home’s mortgage costs, the group said. <\/p>\n
Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek <\/p>\n
\u00a92026 Bloomberg L.P. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Bloomberg) — A key measure of US housing affordability worsened for the first time in almost three years,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1014536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[12],"tags":[3638,64,82103,79,405933,14606,124876,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-1014535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-bloomberg","tag-business","tag-construction-costs","tag-economy","tag-median-family-income","tag-mortgage-rates","tag-national-association-of-home-builders","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117132495634308321","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1014535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1014535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1014535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1014536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1014535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1014535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1014535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}