PITTSBURGH — In the 2022 Demographia International Housing Affordability study presented by the Urban Reform Institute and the Frontier Center for Public Policy, Pittsburgh was named the most affordable city to buy a home.
The 18th annual edition of the study examines middle-income housing affordability in 92 metropolitan areas across eight different countries, specifically examining median housing prices in relation to median household income in each market during the third quarter of 2021. The study uses a metric called the median multiple to rate affordability. The median multiple is the median house price in a metropolitan area divided by the gross median household income (pre-tax) in the same metro. The study then places each metro into one of four categories, ranging from most affordable to least affordable.
The median multiple number for the Pittsburgh market is 2.7, the lowest out of all 92 metros that were analyzed. In the U.S. as a whole, the median multiple was 5.0. Pittsburgh marks the only market in both the U.S. and globally to be categorized as affordable, with a median multiple number under 3.0. Overall, the study found that in 2021, there are five times as many markets with median multiples of at least 10.0 as a decade ago.
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