57% of American Households Unable to Afford $300,000 Home

Washington, DC, March 24, 2025-National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) has updated its housing affordability data for 2025, which shows that 76.4 million households-57% out of a total of 134.3 million-are unable to afford a $300,000 home.

The data is based on conventional underwriting standards that assume the cost of a mortgage, property taxes and property insurance should not exceed 28% of household income. Based on this methodology, NAHB economists have calculated how many households have enough income to afford a home at various price thresholds.

For example, the minimum income required to purchase a $200,000 home with a mortgage rate of 6.5% is $61,487. There are 52.87 million U.S. households with insufficient incomes (below $61,487) to be able to afford a $200,000 home.

Another 23.53 million Americans have enough income to afford a top price somewhere between $200,000 and $300,000. Adding up the bottom two rungs shows that there are 76.4 million households who cannot afford a $300,000 home.

The nationwide median price of a new single-family home is $459,826, meaning half of all new homes sold in the U.S. cost more than this figure and half cost less. A total of 100.6 million households-roughly 75% of all U.S. households-cannot afford this median-priced new home based on a mortgage rate of 6.5%.

According to NAHB, 6.92 million households have enough income to buy a $1 million home, and 1.5 million even have enough for a home priced above $2 million.