Sacramento has one of the least affordable housing markets in US, report says. Here’s why

Jacqueline Pinedo
·2 min read
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Sacramento is one of the least affordable cities in the nation for families looking to buy homes, according to a recent report by Creditnews Research.

The financing news company ranked 50 cities in the United States by the percentage of neighborhoods where home prices are out of reach for the typical married-couple household.

Los Angeles was No. 1 on the list of the top 20 cities with the least affordable housing markets for families, followed by St. Louis in second place and Boston in third place.

In each of those cities, 100% of neighborhoods are out of reach for married-couple households earning a median annual income, CreditNews Research found.

A total of six California cities, including Sacramento, landed on the list of places where homes in some neighborhoods are too expensive for married-couple households.

The most affordable U.S. cities for home buyers are all outside of California, the report said.

They include Cleveland, Hartford, Connecticut, and Memphis, Tennessee.

Where does Sacramento rank on list of unaffordable US cities?

Sacramento was No. 16 on the list of U.S. cities with the highest percentage of neighborhoods where homes are too pricey for families making a median married-couple income.

The median married-couple household income in Sacramento is $123,012, according to CreditNews Research.

The capital city has a total of 107 neighborhoods.

Of those, nearly 43% are out of reach for families earning a median married household income.

According to Creditnews Research, the percentage of Sacramento neighborhoods considered unaffordable for average families grew by 43% during the COVID-19 pandemic.

What other California cities made the list?

Here’s where metropolitan areas in California ranked in terms of the percentage of neighborhoods where housing is out of reach for typical households, according to Creditnews Research.

  • No. 1: Los Angeles, 100% of neighborhoods considered unaffordable

  • No. 4: San Jose, 100% of neighborhoods

  • No. 5: San Diego, 95.5% of neighborhoods

  • No. 6: San Francisco, 89.1% of neighborhoods

  • No. 11: Riverside-San Bernardino, 52.3% of neighborhoods

  • No. 16: Sacramento, 43% of neighborhoods

How were cities ranked?

To come up with its rankings, Creditnews Research “looked at the median income of married-couple households in each city from 2022 and adjusted it for real wage growth in 2023.”

It then looked at the average value of a home for 5,800 neighborhoods in the nation’s 50 largest cities and compared the cost to the median income for families in those cities.

If mortgage prices in a neighborhood exceeded the average married-couple household’s gross income by 25%, it was considered unaffordable.

Creditnews Research sourced information from the Federal Reserve Bank, the U.S. Census Bureau and Zillow for its report.

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