According to data collected and analyzed for the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index, the affordability of single family homes was at it’s most affordable at the tail end of 2012. What does that mean exactly? Final sales prices for homes that changed hands in the last quarter of the year were at 84 percent affordability, meaning they fell within the “affordable” range for the median income of $59,100. This affordability finding made Memphis the 107th most affordable metro in the country for housing, which was a jump from the third quarter of 2012 which placed Memphis at #143. The Olive Branch movers have hopes that the affordability of the region will carry over into this first quarter of 2013, something we will not have a definite answer for until mid April.

This affordability scale is quite important for the economic stability of a region, because it shows that the home pricing is parallel with the incomes that residents of the region are bringing in. The most affordable housing region in the country is Ogden-Clearfield, Utah, where almost 94 percent of the new and existing homes sold were affordable for median-wage residents. At the other end of the list, the least affordable region was San Francisco-San mateo-Redwood City, Calif., where just under 29 percent of homes sold were affordable to median income households.