See what percentage of local home listings you could afford based on your income

The homes for sale across the Philadelphia metropolitan area are getting less affordable for everyone but those with the highest incomes.

The metropolitan area that includes Philadelphia, Camden, and Wilmington was one of 26 areas nationally where homes on the market at the start of spring were less affordable than last year for buyers across incomes, according to an analysis of listings on Realtor.com for the country’s 100 largest metros.

Philadelphia-area buyers making $75,000 a year could afford only a quarter of the homes for sale in March, according to the analysis by the National Association of Realtors and Realtor.com. They could afford slightly more — about 28% — of the homes for sale in March 2024.

These buyers would be able to afford about 44% of listings if the share of affordable homes for sale were proportionate to income distributions, according to the report.

The Philadelphia metro area was close to a proportionate market in March 2019 before the pandemic and has slipped out of balance even more in the last couple of years.

In the report, affordability means spending up to 30% of income on monthly housing costs, a widely used definition.

» READ MORE: In 2024, homes for sale in the Philly region were more affordable than across the country as a whole. But they weren’t affordable.

Across the country, more homes have been listed for sale this year than last, including at “moderate income price points,” said Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com. But more homes are needed at prices where demand is strongest and gaps are biggest, the report said.

“We still don’t have an abundance of homes that are affordable to low- and moderate-income households, and the progress that we’ve seen is not happening everywhere,” Hale said in a statement. “It’s been concentrated in the Midwest and the South.”

In the Philadelphia metro in March, the income levels lacking the most affordable listings were $50,000 and $75,000.

Thousands of listings were also missing at the $15,000, $25,000, $35,000, $100,000, and $125,000 income levels.

The report separated metropolitan areas into three groups according to how well homes for sale in March aligned with income distributions.

» READ MORE: Real Estate Housing Only 15% of Zillow home listings were affordable for the typical Black household in the Philly area in 2024

Of the 100 largest metro areas, 30 are places where affordability has improved “significantly” in the last year, and buyers across incomes can find homes for sale. The Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Detroit areas are among these places.

In 44 metros, there’s a mismatch between housing supply and demand by income, “but not at crisis levels,” the report said. Allentown; Atlanta; Austin, Texas; and Washington are included in this list of metros “stuck in the middle” — those showing signs of progress but still not meeting households’ affordability needs.

And then there‘s the category the Philadelphia metro area and 25 others find themselves in: “areas falling further behind.”

In these places — including New York, Miami, and Los Angeles — fewer affordable homes were for sale this March than last, and there’s a growing gap between the share of affordable homes for sale by income level and the share that would be available in a proportionate market.

See the share of March home listings that Philadelphia-area buyers could afford at different income levels.