USA has all of the world's 11 affordable housing markets

[Max Householder]

I came across this really interesting study on worldwide housing affordability.

"The 13th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey covers 406 metropolitan housing markets (metropolitan areas) in nine countries (Australia, Canada, China, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States) for the third quarter of 2016. A total of 92 major metropolitan markets (housing markets) --- with more than 1,000,000 population --- are included."

"The Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey rates middle-income housing affordability using the “Median Multiple,” which is the median house price divided by the median household income"

"There are 11 affordable major housing markets in 2016, all in the United States. Rochester is the most affordable, with a Median Multiple of 2.5, followed by Buffalo (2.6), Cincinnati (2.7), Cleveland (2.7), Pittsburgh (2.7), Oklahoma City (2.9), St. Louis (2.9) and four at 3.0, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Indianapolis and Kansas City."

There is a nice chart on page 13 of the study (page 23 of the PDF).

"The affordable markets are generally characterized by more liberal land use regulation, which is associated with greater housing affordability."

http://www.demographia.com/dhi.pdf

[Jay Hinrichs]

@Tom Ott  the old rust belt cities have such huge swaths of demographic shifts with erosions of values to the point the homes cost 1/4 of what they would cost to rebuild .. these areas have turned into the land of the turn key operator or landlord rental area.. and as such the values are more commercial in nature IE they will never really move unless rents move... as long as rents are stable ( which in my 20 years of working in those markets they have)  Investors just back into what they will pay for a given cash flow.. the property is just a vessel if you will.. since there are more homes than butts to put into them in many of these areas.. like Detroit you could bull doze 30k homes and still have left over housing for the population.

Down town resurgence is happening in virtually every big city as the millinial buyer and older folks as well are tired of commuting and want a different life style.. and developers are filling that niche.

I know in Portlandia its very true.  Charleston its happening... INdy  Chicago  all over the place and it sounds like Cleveland is enjoying it as well.