With U.S. home prices soaring 19.2% in the 12 months through January, it’s clearly difficult for non-wealthy people to afford a home.
“There has been a strong trend away from affordability,” according to a study of world housing markets by the U.S. Urban Reform Institute and Canada’s Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
“The number of severely unaffordable markets rose 60% in 2021 compared to 2019, the last prepandemic year.”
In the U.S., 27 housing markets ranked as severely unaffordable in 2021, nearly double the 14 of 2019, the study says.
