Few periods have been as expensive to buy a home as the 1980s, when sky-high mortgage rates nearing 19% made home loans feel insurmountable. Today’s home market echoes the 1980s for many — fueled by the pandemic recovery efforts, 2024 buyers are grappling with surging home prices and the highest interest rates in over two decades.
To gain insight into the evolution of housing affordability, MoneyGeek compared housing, income and inflation data for all 50 U.S. states between 1980 and 2022. We found that the house price-to-income ratio nearly doubled between 1980 (2.5) and 2022 (4.3), highlighting decreased affordability. However, the percentage of income spent on housing costs increased at a slower pace, from 23% in 1980 to nearly 28% in 2022, partly due to lower inflation and interest rates during both periods.
So is it harder to buy a home today than in the 1980s? The general answer is yes, but it's not universal — local home prices, mortgage rates, infrastructure and income trends vary, and individual circumstances add complexity to the picture.