The least affordable US cities
The CensusEasy Afford Score ranks US cities by the ratio of median home value to median household income. Berkeley, CA is the least affordable large city, where homes cost 13.1x the typical income.
How far does a paycheck go toward a home? The CensusEasy Afford Score answers it with a single number: the ratio of a city's median home value to its median household income. A ratio of 3 means the typical home costs three years of the typical household's entire income; a ratio of 10 means ten years. Housing economists generally treat anything above 5 as severely unaffordable. By that yardstick the cities below are in a league of their own.
Among the 358 US cities with at least 100,000 residents, Berkeley, CA is the least affordable, where the median home ($1,413,900) costs 13.1x the median household income ($108,092). The median large city on this list carries a ratio of 4.8, already well past the severe-unaffordability line. The ranking is overwhelmingly a story of one coast: California (22), Colorado (1), Hawaii (1) dominate the top.
The 25 least affordable large US cities
| # | City | Median home value | Median household income | Value-to-income ratio |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Berkeley, CA | $1,413,900 | $108,092 | 13.1x |
| 2 | Glendale, CA | $1,102,300 | $88,393 | 12.5x |
| 3 | Boulder, CO | $1,039,500 | $87,493 | 11.9x |
| 4 | Los Angeles, CA | $921,200 | $81,939 | 11.2x |
| 5 | Burbank, CA | $1,089,100 | $97,082 | 11.2x |
| 6 | Inglewood, CA | $792,800 | $72,750 | 10.9x |
| 7 | San Mateo, CA | $1,618,700 | $153,504 | 10.5x |
| 8 | Pasadena, CA | $1,093,300 | $105,192 | 10.4x |
| 9 | El Cajon, CA | $681,700 | $67,511 | 10.1x |
| 10 | Costa Mesa, CA | $1,115,100 | $111,505 | 10.0x |
| 11 | San Francisco, CA | $1,394,500 | $140,970 | 9.9x |
| 12 | Honolulu, HI | $843,400 | $86,504 | 9.7x |
| 13 | Sunnyvale, CA | $1,801,800 | $186,170 | 9.7x |
| 14 | New York, NY | $777,600 | $80,483 | 9.7x |
| 15 | El Monte, CA | $644,000 | $68,030 | 9.5x |
| 16 | East Los Angeles, CA | $643,100 | $68,741 | 9.4x |
| 17 | Torrance, CA | $1,074,700 | $116,217 | 9.2x |
| 18 | Long Beach, CA | $806,600 | $87,430 | 9.2x |
| 19 | Oakland, CA | $929,900 | $101,600 | 9.2x |
| 20 | Huntington Beach, CA | $1,100,000 | $120,919 | 9.1x |
| 21 | Daly City, CA | $1,115,000 | $123,547 | 9.0x |
| 22 | Santa Clara, CA | $1,582,600 | $178,958 | 8.8x |
| 23 | Garden Grove, CA | $814,100 | $92,174 | 8.8x |
| 24 | Carlsbad, CA | $1,257,000 | $142,748 | 8.8x |
| 25 | Downey, CA | $796,600 | $90,699 | 8.8x |
California cities take most of the top spots, with the priciest pockets of Southern California and the Bay Area appearing alongside coastal enclaves like Santa Monica and Santa Barbara. Honolulu and New York round out the most-stretched large markets. In each, the gap is driven less by extraordinary incomes than by home values that have decoupled from local wages.
How to read the ratio
The value-to-income ratio is a measure of relative cost, not absolute price. A city with sky-high home prices but equally high incomes can rank as more affordable than a modest market where wages never kept pace with housing. The ratio also reflects owner-occupied home values, not rents, so cities where most residents rent can still post a high ratio if the homes that do sell are far out of reach for the median earner.
The full ranked list of all 895 US cities with at least 50,000 residents (not just the top 25) is available as a CSV at /data/studies/least-affordable-us-cities.csv. Click any city above to open its CensusEasy profile, which carries the full home-value, income, and housing-cost breakdown behind its ratio.
What is the least affordable city in America?
Among US cities with at least 100,000 residents, Berkeley, CA is the least affordable by the CensusEasy Afford Score: its median home value ($1,413,900) is 13.1x its median household income ($108,092).
How is housing affordability measured here?
By the value-to-income ratio: median home value divided by median household income, both from the latest ACS 5-year estimates. A ratio of 3 means a home costs three years of total household income; housing economists generally treat anything above 5 as severely unaffordable.
Why are so many of the least affordable cities in California?
California coastal cities combine very high home values with incomes that, while above average, have not risen as fast as housing prices. The result is some of the widest gaps between what homes cost and what households earn anywhere in the country.
The CensusEasy Afford Score is the ratio of a city's median owner-occupied home value to its median household income, computed for every US place from the latest American Community Survey 5-year estimates (home value from table B25077, household income from B19013). A lower score is more affordable; a higher score means homes cost more years of income. We rank cities from highest ratio (least affordable) to lowest.
Both inputs are reported in the same survey vintage (2024), so no inflation adjustment is needed: the ratio compares contemporaneous home values and incomes for the same population in the same year. The score is computed for all 143,261 cities with both values published in the latest vintage.
"City" means a Census place row of type city in the CensusEasy database; consolidated city-county governments are included under their common name. The ranking on this page is restricted to cities with at least 100,000 residents so the list features recognizable places with statistically stable estimates; the downloadable CSV widens the floor to 50,000 residents. Very small places are excluded from the headline ranking because a handful of high-value sales or a narrow income sample can distort the ratio.
The full underlying ranking is available as a CSV — every place with both data points, not just the top rows shown above. Columns: rank, place, state, baseline value, latest value, change, and the CensusEasy URL for each place.
↓ least-affordable-us-cities.csvYou may cite or republish these findings, and the downloadable dataset is licensed under CC BY 4.0. Reuse requires that you credit CensusEasy and link back to this page so readers can verify the underlying data.
CensusEasy Data Team (2026). "The least affordable US cities." CensusEasy. Retrieved from https://censuseasy.com/studies/least-affordable-us-cities
- US Census Bureau, American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates: median owner-occupied home value (table B25077) and median household income (B19013). Source: data.census.gov.
- CensusEasy Afford Score: original index (median home value divided by median household income) computed by CensusEasy from the sources above. Methodology documented at /methodology.
CensusEasy publishes original research grounded in US Census Bureau data. Every study includes the underlying numbers, methodology, and sources so readers can verify or extend the analysis.
Data note. Figures in this report are derived from US Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics data, including American Community Survey estimates that carry sampling margins of error. This information is provided as is, for general informational purposes, without warranty of accuracy or completeness. CensusEasy is not affiliated with or endorsed by the US Census Bureau or any government agency. See our Terms of Use for details.