Home Affordability Slipped Last Spring

Kansas City and Minneapolis-St. Paul ranked among metropolitan areas with the most affordable housing last spring.

They were the only cities with populations of more than 1 million to make the National Association of Home Builders’ list of 25 most affordable areas during the April-June quarter, the trade group said Wednesday.

As usual, the list of the 25 least affordable cities was loaded with big cities, including San Francisco, the least affordable of all. Spokane isn’t included in the survey.

The affordability of most housing markets worsened during the second quarter as 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages moved above 8 percent, said association President Randy Smith, a Walnut Creek, Calif., builder.

Rockford, a city of 340,000 northwest of Chicago, topped the Home Builders Housing Opportunity Index.

Elkhart, Ind., and Des Moines, Iowa, were second and third. The Kansas City area, with a population of 1.6 million, was 11th; Minneapolis-St. Paul, with 2.6 million residents, 22nd.

The index measures the proportion of homes sold in a specific market that a family earning the median income in that market could afford to buy.