{"id":455657,"date":"2026-10-03T23:08:29","date_gmt":"2026-10-03T23:08:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/455657\/"},"modified":"2026-10-03T23:08:29","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T23:08:29","slug":"austin-ranks-no-6-nationwide-for-affordability-and-housing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/455657\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin ranks No. 6 nationwide for affordability and housing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A new national real estate report card has rated Austin top of the class for housing demand and affordability. <\/p>\n<p>Realtor.com&#8217;s first-ever <a href=\"https:\/\/www.realtor.com\/research\/metro-report-cards-2026\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Metro Affordability &amp; Homebuilding Report Card<\/a> compared the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. based on two scores: an &#8220;Affordability Components&#8221; score that examined the current affordability of housing for residents, and a &#8220;Homebuilding Components&#8221; score that analyzed the rate of new home construction to meet future demand. Both scores were then used to calculate the final score and assigned a letter grade.<\/p>\n<p>Including Austin, 10 total U.S. metros received grades in the &#8220;A&#8221; range \u2014 A+, A, A- \u2014 representing the most balanced locales for &#8220;favorable current affordability conditions and healthy future inventory growth to sustain them.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Homebuilding and affordability are inseparable, and if we want to improve affordability in a lasting way, we need to build more homes,&#8221; said Realtor.com chief economist Danielle Hale. &#8220;The metros at the top of these rankings show that buyers benefit most when communities pair homes that are attainable for today&#8217;s local earners with enough new construction to support tomorrow&#8217;s demand.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Only two metros earned &#8220;A+&#8221; grades with a total score of 77.5 or higher: De Moines-West DeMoines, Idaho (83.4 points) and Raleigh-Cary, North Carolina (82.8 points).<\/p>\n<p>Austin was rated &#8220;A-&#8221; overall with an &#8220;Affordability Components&#8221; score of 52 points and a &#8220;Homebuying Components&#8221; score of 92.9 points. Four other metros earned the same rating: Jacksonville, Florida; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Palm Bay-Melbourne, Florida; and Columbus, Ohio.<\/p>\n<p>Realtor.com&#8217;s report said the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metro has a median household income of $102,412, and home listings have a median price of $501,200.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike newly built homes in many other U.S. metros, those in the Austin area are actually more affordable than existing homes on the market. Austin has a negative &#8220;new construction premium,&#8221; where new build homes are 6 percent cheaper than existing ones.<\/p>\n<p>The Austin metro also has a permit-to-population ratio of 2.37. Combined with the negative premium for new builds, these factors signal that &#8220;builders are delivering homes at a rate well above the metro&#8217;s population share \u2014 and at prices slightly below existing homes.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Austin&#8217;s &#8220;Realtors Affordability Score,&#8221; or the share of for-sale inventory affordable to households at different income levels, is 0.639, slightly lower than the national average of 0.675.<\/p>\n<p>Housing market grades across other Texas metros<br \/>Houston was the only other Texas metro to earn a grade in the &#8220;A&#8221; range. It is rated &#8220;A&#8221; with a combined score of 74.8 points.<\/p>\n<p>Houston has a 1.88 housing permit-to population ratio, meaning the metro permits 88 percent more new homes than what would be considered typical based on the metro&#8217;s population and national average construction levels.<\/p>\n<p>This is a snapshot of the factors that impacted Houston&#8217;s grade:<\/p>\n<p>Realtors Affordability Score: 0.691Median listing price: $363,106Median household income: $78,845<\/p>\n<p>Elsewhere in Texas, Dallas-Fort Worth was given a &#8220;B+&#8221; rating, while San Antonio-New Braunfels and McAllen-Edinburg-Mission were both rated &#8220;C+.&#8221; El Paso&#8217;s housing market performance was only worthy of a &#8220;D&#8221; grade.<\/p>\n<p>The top 10 U.S. metros with the highest-performing housing markets are:<\/p>\n<p>No. 1 \u2013 De Moines-West Demoines, Idaho (A+)No. 2 \u2013 Ralgieh-Cary, North Carolina (A+)No. 3 \u2013 Columbia, South Carolina (A)No. 4 \u2013 Houston, Texas (A)No. 5 \u2013 Indianapolis, Indiana (A)No. 6 \u2013 Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, Texas (A-)No. 7 \u2013 Jacksonville, Florida (A-)No. 8 \u2013 Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (A-)No. 9 \u2013 Palm Bay-Melbourne, Florida (A-)No. 10 \u2013 Columbus, Ohio (A-)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new national real estate report card has rated Austin top of the class for housing demand and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":455658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,3222,6358,111,17173],"class_list":["post-455657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-housing","tag-housing-market","tag-real-estate","tag-realtor-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=455657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/455658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}