It’s hard to sell it as a positive when such a large gap still exists between actual median household income and the pay needed to afford a typical home in the U.S.
But the gap is trending in the right direction, as seen in a homebuying affordability analysis published on Tuesday by Redfin.
The necessary income to buy a typical home declined for the seventh consecutive month, and was down 2% overall in April compared to a year earlier. To purchase a median-priced home in the U.S., the median household income would need to be $116,780, compared to $119,191 in April 2025. It had reached a peak of $122,000 in mid-2025.
Redfin attributed the improvement to lower mortgage rates — April’s average 30-year fixed rate was 6.33%, down from 6.73% a year earlier — along with a rise in median household income to $87,599, up 4% year over year.
Grishma Bhattarai, an economist at Redfin who analyzes housing market trends and their broader socioeconomic impacts, called the numbers encouraging.
“House hunters who have been waiting on the sidelines may want to start paying close attention: In addition to costs coming down, there are still more homes on the market than there were a year ago, many more sellers than buyers, and more room for buyers to negotiate,” she commented. “Buyers are starting to notice: Pending home sales jumped in early May, which may lead to more bidding wars and bigger price increases.”
The analysis pointed to previous Redfin predictions that housing affordability would continue to get better throughout the year, though it cautioned that “could be derailed if the Iran war continues pushing up oil prices, the Fed hikes interest rates or the economy experiences another shock.”
Another positive trend the analysis noted was the volume of affordable listings — those that would require no more than 30% of the household income — increased from 28.7% in 2025 to 32.9% in April. These numbers still lag far behind where they had been.
“Before mortgage rates shot up in 2022, more than half of U.S. home listings were affordable to the typical American nearly every single month in records dating back through 2013,” the report stated.
