Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Detroit holding out as the last affordable housing markets

Priced out of your local housing market? It might be time to consider a move to the Midwest.

As home prices and mortgage rates remain high, just three US metropolitan areas — St. Louis, Detroit, and Pittsburgh — have homes for sale at prices that are, on average, comfortably affordable on a median income.

In all three cities, the median home was listed for under $300,000 as of May, putting a purchase in reach for households bringing in $70,000 to $80,000 a year, according to Realtor.com. Generally speaking, spending 30% of one’s income or less on housing is considered affordable.

Incomes haven’t kept up with home prices and interest rates, meaning the number of cities where most of the homes for sale meet the “30% rule” has shrunk.

In Pittsburgh, the nation’s most affordable city for average earners, the median home was listed for $250,000 in May. Homebuyers who put 20% down at that price would pay $1,664 in monthly mortgage, taxes, and insurance at current interest rates. The average household income in the Steel City, which isn’t technically Midwestern but has similar market dynamics, is $73,000, making that kind of payment a relatively comfortable 27.4% of income.

The math works similarly in St. Louis and Detroit, where average earners can expect purchasing an average home to cost them 30% and 29.8% of their incomes, respectively.

“It’s a great place to buy property,” said Deena Watts, a Realtor in Florissant, Mo., just north of St. Louis. “The cost of living is still worth it in St. Louis. It’s a great place to be.”

Watts recently helped a client close on a $74,900 home. While that price is something of an outlier, the average home in the St. Louis area was listed at just under $300,000 in May, still affordable for households making the area’s median income of about $80,000.

Read more: 2025 housing market: Is it a good time to buy a house?

'Overlooked and undervalued'

The Midwest, with its lower-than-average home prices, is one of the last parts of the country with real pockets of affordability. Though none of the three remaining cities on the list have particularly high average wages, their home prices are more than $150,000 below national averages, said Hannah Jones, senior economic research analyst at Realtor.com.

St Louis (pictured), Detroit, and Pittsburgh all have homes for sale at prices that are, on average, comfortably affordable on a median income. · benedek via Getty Images

In the St. Louis area, Realtor Dawn Griffin has seen budget-conscious buyers gravitate toward towns like Affton and Overland, two close-in suburbs where homes can still regularly be found for under $250,000.

“They had really been overlooked and undervalued for a long time,” Griffin said. “St. Louis geographically is very spread out. There are pockets of very high-end houses, but there are pockets of very, very affordable houses too.”

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How much longer that affordability can last, though, is unclear. While home prices have been growing more slowly in much of the country this year, and prices are even sliding in some markets, the Midwest has seen strong price appreciation in part because the region hasn’t seen the same building activity as parts of the South and Western US.

While Griffin says the pandemic days of home prices jumping double-digits in a matter of months seem to be over, prices in St. Louis are still rising, albeit at a more typical pace in the single-digit range.

“It seems to be a normal kind of appreciation — a healthy kind of appreciation,” Griffin said. “I don’t know that we’ll see a decrease in prices.”

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Rising prices have meant other Midwestern metros areas like Cleveland and Indianapolis exceed the 30% rule, and it would take a major drop in mortgage rates to change that.

Realtor.com conducted its analysis in May, when mortgage rates averaged around 6.8%. They’ve fallen slightly since then, but not enough to tip any other regions back onto the affordability list. Mortgage rates would need to fall below 4% before more than a handful of metro areas would become broadly in reach for average earners, Jones said.

“This underscores the powerful and compounding effect of elevated home prices and high interest rates on housing costs,” she said.

Claire Boston is a Senior Reporter for Yahoo Finance covering housing, mortgages, and home insurance.

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