Housing Affordability Climbs Higher in Q4

Even as prices rise in many markets across the country, affordability remains high. In fact, housing affordability rose close 1 percentage point up to 74.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to the Housing Opportunity Index released Friday by the ""National Association of Home Builders"":https://www.nahb.org/ (NAHB) and ""Wells Fargo"":https://www.wellsfargo.com/.

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NAHB attributes this continued high affordability amid rising prices to ""exceptionally low interest rates.""

Nationally, the median price of a home sold in the fourth quarter of 2012 was $188,000, down from the three-year high of $189,000 reached in the previous quarter, according to NAHB.

""The most recent housing affordability data should be encouraging to many prospective home buyers, because it shows that homeownership remains within reach of [COLUMN_BREAK]

median-income consumers even as most local markets appear to be on a recovery path,"" said Rick Judson, chairman of NAHB.

Fairbanks, Alaska, topped the affordability chart in the fourth quarter as 99.6 percent of homes sold in the city over the period were affordable with the area's median income of $92,000.

While Fairbanks outranked all other markets, NAHB pointed out Ogden-Clearfield, Utah, was the most affordable major metro market in the fourth quarter. Families earning the median income of $71,500 could afford 93.7 percent of the homes sold in the market over the quarter.

At the bottom of the chart was the San Francisco-San Mateo-Redwood City area in California, where just 28.4 percent of homes sold in the fourth quarter were affordable to those with a household income matching the area's median income of $103,000.

The California market displaced New York-White Plains-Wayne, New York-New Jersey, which ranked as the least affordable market on the NAHB index for the previous 18 quarters. About 29.6 percent of homes sold in the fourth quarter in the New York-New Jersey market were affordable to median-income earners bringing in $68,300.

Six of the 10 least affordable markets are located in California. No California markets ranked in the top 10 most affordable metros.