Affordability

Homebuyer affordability improved in July, with the national median payment applied for by purchase applicants decreasing to $2,127 from $2,172 in June. This is according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Purchase Applications Payment Index (PAPI), which measures how new monthly mortgage payments vary across time – relative to income – using data from MBA’s Weekly Applications Survey (WAS).

ATTOM released its latest Special Housing Risk Report spotlighting county-level housing markets around the United States that are more or less vulnerable to declines, based on home affordability, equity and other measures in the first quarter of 2025. The report shows that California and New Jersey had high concentrations of counties considered most at-risk.

Homebuyer affordability improved slightly in December, with the national median payment applied for by purchase applicants decreasing to $2,127 from $2,133 in November. This is according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Purchase Applications Payment Index (PAPI), which measures how new monthly mortgage payments vary across time – relative to income – using data from MBA’s Weekly Applications Survey (WAS).

Down Payment Resource (DPR), an authority on homebuyer assistance program data and solutions, released its Q4 2024 Homeownership Program Index (HPI) report. The report saw the number of homebuyer assistance programs increase by 172 and the number of entities offering them increase by 75 year-over-year (YoY), bringing the total number of available programs to 2,466.

LenderLogix released the Homebuyer Intelligence Report, a quarterly summary of insights into borrower behavior during the home-buying process based on data collected by the LenderLogix suite of tools. The latest report covers data collected during the pre-approval and borrower application process in the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2024. Here’s what the report concluded:

Homebuyer affordability declined in November, with the national median payment applied for by purchase applicants increasing to $2,133 from $2,127 from October. This is according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Purchase Applications Payment Index (PAPI), which measures how new monthly mortgage payments vary across time – relative to income – using data from MBA’s Weekly Applications Survey (WAS).

Homebuyer affordability declined in October, with the national median payment applied for by purchase applicants increasing to $2,127 from $2,041 in September.

Optimal Blue today released its October 2024 Market Advantage mortgage data report, highlighting resilient purchase activity in the face of rising interest rates and affordability challenges.

Homebuyer affordability improved in September, with the national median payment applied for by purchase applicants decreasing to $2,041 from $2,057 in August. This is according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Purchase Applications Payment Index (PAPI), which measures how new monthly mortgage payments vary across time – relative to income – using data from MBA’s Weekly Applications Survey (WAS). 

ATTOM released its third-quarter 2024 U.S. Home Affordability Report showing that median-priced single-family homes and condos remain less affordable in the third quarter of 2024 compared to historical averages in 99 percent of counties around the nation with sufficient data to analyze. The latest trend continues a pattern, dating back to early 2022, of home ownership requiring historically large portions of wages as U.S. home prices keep reaching new highs.