Home prices were up 16.6% in the nation’s top 50 metros in April
By Patrick Kearns | May 5, 2022
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Median home sold price in the nation’s top 50 metro areas climbed 16.6% year over year in April. It's the highest level of price appreciation since real estate technology company OJO Labs began publishing its monthly affordability data in July 2021. With mortgage rates hovering around 5%, would-be homebuyers are seeing a new level of home price unaffordability.
For the second consecutive month, 11 U.S. metros reported a median home sold price of more than $500,000 — with Colorado Springs, Colorado sitting just outside at $460,000. There were also 16 metros with an unaffordability score — a ratio of home sold price to local median household income — at or above 6, compared to just 10 metro areas in March.
San Francisco’s median home sold price hit $1.4 million in April, driving its unaffordability score to a new record high of 11.1. San Francisco, California was the nation’s least affordable metro area for the second consecutive month after being briefly dethroned by San Diego, California earlier this year. On an annual basis, home prices rose 12% in San Francisco.
The rest of the top five most unaffordable metros remained the same, with San Francisco trailed by San Diego, California; Los Angeles, California; Miami, Florida; and Denver, Colorado.
According to the data, Austin, Texas, took home the dubious honor of seeing the biggest increase in median home sold price. The median home in the Central Texas city sold for $524,900 in April, an increase of 33% year-over-year.
Green Bay-Appleton, Wisconsin, continued to be the most affordable of the top 50 metro areas in the nation in terms of homes sold. In April, the median home sold price in Green Bay-Appleton was $155,000, an increase of 13% from the year prior — leading to an unaffordability score of 2.2, unchanged from last month.
Buffalo, New York; Cleveland, Ohio; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and St. Louis, Missouri, rounded out the top five most affordable metro areas in the U.S.
Even with the increase in overall home price appreciation, there are still many metro areas at a level lower than the national average. Baltimore, Maryland; Boston, Massachusetts; Chicago, Illinois; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Washington, D.C., also saw home prices rise at a rate of 6% or lower on an annual basis.
Nationally, the median annual home price climbed from last month to $394,549 in April. Home prices rose 16.6% year over year in April to bring the national unaffordability score to 5.1, up from 4.7 last month. It’s the first time the OJO unaffordability score has topped 5 since OJO Labs began tracking the data.
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