Optimists dispute this gloomy assessment, pointing out that some measures of housing affordability have dramatically improved.
Historically, housing affordability has ebbed and flowed with the economy and buyers' ability to pay.
Honolulu fall in the bottom quartile when it comes to housing affordability, income and cost of living.
He argues that by lowering mortgage rates, QE2 will increase housing affordability and enable more homeowners to refinance.
Six of the 10 most unaffordable cities are in Australia according to the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey.
Higher rates would lower housing affordability while also reducing refinancing activity, which itself acts as a form of economic stimulus.
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Few have anything like the same level of state support, yet many have comparable levels of home ownership and housing affordability.
Next fall, for example, NAHB and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People will host a symposium on housing affordability.
Optimists point out that some measures of housing affordability have dramatically improved.
The Bank of Scotland first-time buyer review tracks housing affordability in nearly 250 local authority areas across the UK, including 26 in Scotland.
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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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.
But based on rates of self-employment, housing affordability, income growth and migration, immigrant entrepreneurs tend to prefer sprawling, heavily suburbanized regions, many of them clustered in the South and Southwest.
"Housing market activity revives when house prices decline sufficiently to restore housing affordability and entice buyers to step up and make a purchase, " says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com.
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 .
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.
Oxnard, Los Angeles, Bakersfield, San Francisco and San Jose have vacancy rates that are well below the national average, and that are sufficiently low that we can expect inflation adjusted rents to continue to rise in these cities, making housing affordability even worse.
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.
"The affordability and quality of housing stock definitely exists in Ridgewood and it's just a couple of extra train stops away, " said Joseph V.
When rates are low, housing prices can rise without affecting affordability.
But Mr Oxley thinks the volume of new housing is only one factor affecting the real issue, which is affordability, or rather the lack of it.
While I don't buy the argument that we have a housing bubble, I do believe prices are inflated and are pushing the limits of affordability.
Housing prices are starting to edge up, but have not risen enough to limit affordability, just enough to calm fears about buying a depreciating asset.
Or, as housing experts I spoke to fretted, cities may not have the infrastructure to set up or monitor affordability restrictions.
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