Median-priced housing consumed 30.3 percent of a typical U.S. worker’s annual wage in the first quarter of 2026, highlighting the strain on affordability that is widespread across the country, regardless of local market conditions.
If buying a home seems more difficult than ever, new data shows why.
Paying for a median-priced home consumed 30.3% of a typical U.S. worker’s annual wage in the first quarter of 2026, according to a new report from Atom, highlighting the affordability burden that is widespread across the country, regardless of local market conditions.
Atom’s first quarter housing risk report ranked 580 counties on four metrics: foreclosure rates, percentage of seriously underwater mortgages, and affordability relative to local wage and unemployment rates, and found that the most at-risk markets are concentrated in Florida and California, where rising unemployment and foreclosure activity have further exacerbated the affordability burden.
Of the 50 most dangerous counties, 12 were in Florida, nine in California, and five each in Illinois and New Jersey. The most affordable county in the analysis was Kings County, New York, where the cost of a median-priced home accounted for 108.6% of a typical resident’s wage.
“While home prices have come down slightly from their record highs last summer, affordability remains a challenge in many parts of the country,” Atom CEO Rob Barber said in a statement. “The greatest risk remains in counties where unemployment rates are above 5% and home foreclosures are high.”
Nationally, 1 in 1,211 homes are in foreclosure, and 3.2% of homes are in severe flooding. This means the loan balance is at least 25% above the estimated market value. Louisiana parishes had the highest flooding rates, with Ouachita Parish at 17.4 percent.
Among low-risk counties, nine of the 50 safest counties were in Tennessee. Although these markets were significantly less affordable than other markets, they had some of the lowest unemployment and foreclosure rates in our analysis, a difference that can be important to agents working with dislocated clients and investors evaluating market stability.
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