What is the preferred metric for assessing housing affordability in a community?

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Measuring housing affordability hinges on how expensive housing is relative to what people earn. The preferred metric is the ratio of median housing price to median household income. This price-to-income figure shows how many times the typical annual income is needed to buy a typical home, making it easy to compare communities and track changes over time. A higher ratio signals lower affordability and is a familiar benchmark policymakers and planners use to assess housing markets. In practice, this metric uses standard data (median home price and median household income) and directly links housing cost to household resources, which helps set practical expectations like 3x to 5x affordability targets. The other metrics don’t fit as well: inverting the ratio would obscure the relationship between income and home price; rent-to-income focuses on renting rather than ownership; and using per-capita income can distort affordability because it doesn’t capture household purchasing power or economies of scale.