Sooner or later, the affordability index kicks high enough to prompt many families to take the plunge.
While rising rates do hurt the affordability index they may also have an effect that has not been looked at.
Cities like San Diego or Tampa are improving in the housing affordability index because buying activity in the lower segment of the market has picked up.
The housing affordability index (HAI) measures whether a family earning a median income could qualify for a mortgage loan on a median-priced, single-family home.
Historically low interest rates and bottom-of-the-trough housing prices have combined to increase the Housing Affordability Index (as reported by the National Association of Realtors) to record highs.
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We took the job-growth and cost-of-living rankings, and added to the mix a housing affordability index from research firm Moody's Economy.com and a salary index from Seattle-based compensation collection firm PayScale .
As the Fiscal Cliff debate diffuses into so many Three-Card Monte games during 2013, perhaps the clarity of the Government Affordability Index can prevent us from being tricked, over and over and over again.
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The housing affordability index gauges the amount of a local, median-priced home (the price at which 50% of homes are more expensive and 50% are less expensive) you can buy if you earn the local median income, given current interest rates.
Starter-home affordability: Moody's Economy.com provided us with an index of housing affordability based on the cost of a median priced home in each city compared with the median income.
Use the Case-Shiller index, where the affordability of housing worsened sharply during the boom, and mortgage payments are still high in relation to incomes.
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