A recent report by Creditnews Research highlights Miami as one of the least affordable cities in the United States for families seeking to purchase homes. The study evaluated 50 cities based on the proportion of neighborhoods where home prices exceed the reach of typical married-couple households.
Miami ranked among the top cities with the highest percentage of unaffordable neighborhoods, with Los Angeles topping the list, followed by St. Louis and Boston. In these cities, all neighborhoods were deemed unaffordable for median-income married-couple households.
Alongside Miami, three other Florida cities—Orlando, Tampa, and Jacksonville—were featured on the list, underscoring the statewide challenge of housing affordability.
Contrastingly, the most affordable cities for homebuyers are situated outside Florida, including Cleveland, Hartford (Connecticut), and Memphis (Tennessee).
Miami specifically registered a median married-couple household income of $96,581, with approximately 79% of its 107 neighborhoods classified as unaffordable for families within this income bracket. Notably, the percentage of unaffordable neighborhoods in Miami surged by 34.7% during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Other Florida metropolitan areas ranked by Creditnews Research include Orlando (ranked 17th), Tampa (22nd), and Jacksonville (25th), each reflecting varying degrees of neighborhood unaffordability.
Creditnews Research derived its rankings by assessing the median income of married-couple households in 2022, adjusted for real wage growth in 2023. The study then compared home values across 5,800 neighborhoods in the nation’s largest cities against median family incomes, deeming neighborhoods unaffordable if mortgage costs exceeded household incomes by 25%.
Sources for this report included the Federal Reserve Bank, the U.S. Census Bureau, and Zillow, providing comprehensive insights into the housing affordability challenges faced by families across major U.S. cities.
