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ABOUT THIS PROJECT

How can we quantify housing affordability?

This is my personal exploration of the economics of housing, comparing data from across geographic regions, especially in the United States.

My analysis accomplishes three main objectives:

  • Sheds light on the global scale of housing affordability challenges
  • Quantifies the financial impact of home prices across different income levels
  • Offers a comparison of housing affordability between major U.S. cities, accounting for income differences
view in tableau
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This project began when I found publicly-sourced housing data on Numbeo that revealed a surprising pattern. While U.S. home prices are generally high compared to other countries, global price-to-income ratios told a different story. Because Americans earn higher average incomes, U.S. cities consistently ranked among the most affordable when measuring cost relative to income.

Though publicly-sourced data has limitations, the pattern was too clear to ignore. I decided to investigate how income differences might change the typical narrative around U.S. housing costs.

Key Insights

  1. Housing unaffordability is a global challenge, not uniquely American
  2. Income differences significantly impact housing affordability—moving to an expensive city becomes manageable with higher pay, while cheaper cities lose appeal if wages drop
  3. Housing supply depends not only on policy and zoning, but also on broader economic health and stability at a local and national level
Global Picture
1. These charts illustrate the data from Numbeo on global housing costs relative to income. Note that this index is based on Numbeo's estimate of disposable income, which only includes income after taxes. This means cities may be more affordable than it appears on the surface in countries with higher taxes, since these often fund social services that individuals would otherwise have to pay for out of their "disposable income."
Rising Home Values
2. From census data, we can see how median home values have risen over the past 10 years. On the map to the right, notice how cities with higher home values (shaded darker blue) tend to be located in areas with higher median incomes (also shaded darker blue).
Factoring Income
3. The different colors here reveal the share of renters paying different percentages of their income on rent, focusing on a few select metro areas, as well as all 50 states. Based on this data, even famously-expensive San Francisco has a lower share of renters paying >35% of income than both Miami and Dallas. On the top right, we can see how nationally, the share of renters paying >35% was slowly declining overall until 2021, when it began to rise again.
Other Facts
4. These are some other interesting facts I uncovered in my analysis. Did you know that resort towns tend to have the highest home vacancy rates? Cities in Florida often rank highly on this list as well. Also, there is a mild positive correlation between housing unaffordability and crowded homes (where there are more than 1.5 people per-room).

Interactive Dashboard

Select cities on the map (Ctl + Click) to compare affordability based on the share of income people pay on rent (top right) and extra cost of ownership (bottom left).

 

Methodology

STEP 1

Data Sourcing

US Census Data

  • American Community Survey: Selected Housing Characteristics 5-Year Estimates, Total Population 5-Year Estimates (2013 – 2023)

Global Home Pricing Index

  • Numbeo: Property Prices Index by City (2025)

STEP 2

Cleaning & Formatting

After collecting all the required data, I took some additional steps to prepare this data for analysis:

  • Created a script to combine datasets from different periods into a single table with years appropriately labeled
  • Added calculated fields to further enrich the data

STEP 3

Analysis & Visualization

Finally, I identified key metrics and comparisons that revealed interesting patterns and shed light on the questions I wanted to answer. After creating the charts, I connected them together to tell a coherent story.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Here are some great articles and charts on this topic!

In this project, I've focused on some very specific metrics, and there are many others to consider when making financial and policy decisions related to housing. These resources offer further insights if you're interested in exploring this topic.

Reach Out Here to Start a Conversation

I'm open to making new connections and exploring ways we can help each other.

Let’s Talk