May 2024 · Affordability · 3 min read · by Kinan Sawar, MD — REALTOR® at Shorewest, REALTORS®
Record-high prices plus 7% mortgages add up to the worst homebuying affordability the U.S. has seen in a generation.
The 2024 spring market opened against the toughest affordability backdrop most buyers have ever faced.
Prices never gave back the pandemic surge, and mortgage rates climbed to multi-decade highs. Together they pushed the share of income required to buy the typical home to levels not seen since the early 1980s.
Across wide stretches of the country, the income needed to afford the median home now exceeds the median household income — sometimes by a lot. The people who live in a place increasingly cannot buy in it at today’s terms.
When buying breaks, demand doesn’t vanish — it migrates and it rents. That’s the through-line connecting affordability to the migration and rental trends shaping the back half of the decade.
Kinan Sawar, MD — REALTOR® at Shorewest, REALTORS®, serving Milwaukee and Southeast Wisconsin (Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee, Washington, Racine, Kenosha, and Walworth counties). Email: [email protected] · Phone: (618) 713-2964.
More Milwaukee housing market insights · Free home valuation
Home values and rents are Zillow ZHVI/ZORI estimates for the named area, as of 2026-07-03; incomes and population are U.S. Census (SAIPE, Population Estimates); migration is IRS Statistics of Income. Area-level statistical estimates for information only — not an appraisal, and not financial, legal, or tax advice.