Buying a median-priced home in Los Angeles would swallow 84.4% of a median earner’s income each month. In Des Moines it takes 27.5%. That gap sits at the heart of Realtor.com’s first Metro Affordability & Homebuilding Report Cards, released Sept. 16, 2026, which graded the 100 largest U.S. metros on whether local earners can afford homes today and whether enough new ones are being built.
Des Moines came first with an A+ and a score of 83.4. Raleigh, North Carolina, took second with another A+ at 82.8. Columbia, South Carolina, was third with an A and 75.3. Ten metros landed in the A range in all: Houston, Indianapolis, Austin, Jacksonville, Oklahoma City, Palm Bay and Columbus filled out the list. At the other end, 13 metros got an F. New York ranked 98th, Providence 99th, and Los Angeles last.
Two ways to win
Des Moines scored 88.3 on affordability and 78.4 on homebuilding. Its median home is listed at $349,903, and the mortgage on it falls under the 30% of income that is commonly treated as the affordability line. The metro also permits 85% more new homes than its population share and the national pace would suggest, a ratio of 1.85. Its weak spot is the price of new construction, which runs 23.4% above existing homes. That puts it in the bottom half of the 100 metros on that measure.
Raleigh got there by building. Its permit-to-population ratio is 2.51, and a new home there costs 1.3% less than an existing one. “Homebuilding and affordability are inseparable, and if we want to improve affordability in a lasting way, we need to build more homes,” said Danielle Hale, Realtor.com’s chief economist.
The bottom of the class
Los Angeles scored 12.0 overall, with 0.9 on affordability and 23.1 on homebuilding. Its median listing price is $1,129,415. Realtor.com assumed a 10% down payment and a 6.5% 30-year fixed rate to reach the 84.4% figure, and said a buyer would need to put down about 68%, roughly $768,000, to bring the payment under the 30% line. The city’s permit ratio is 0.47, less than half the national average.
The other F grades went to Honolulu, Boston, Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, San Francisco, Worcester, San Diego, Stockton, San Jose, Miami and Riverside. Realtor.com noted that Riverside, San Diego, San Jose and Stockton scored comparatively better on building, which it said suggests continued construction could ease affordability later.
Zoning explains a lot
Joel Berner, a senior economist at Realtor.com, pointed to local rules. Boston has four times as many pages of zoning law as Austin. Zoning covers 79% of Boston’s land against 15% in Austin, and minimum parking mandates apply to 88% of Boston land versus 37% of Austin’s. “The ‘A’s share regulatory flexibility and streamlined approval processes, while the ‘F’s are locked in restrictive land-use frameworks,” he said.
The regional split is plain. The South and Midwest hold the strongest performers, where land is often easier to come by and zoning looser. Columbus and Oklahoma City earned A- grades even though Ohio and Oklahoma each received a C+ in the 2026 state report cards.
Each metro got a 100-point score, half from affordability and half from homebuilding. Letter grades run from A+ at 77.5 and above down to F below 30. The report leans mainly on 2025 data: Realtor.com listings, Claritas income estimates, and Census Bureau permit and population figures. It opens against a U.S. housing supply gap that Realtor.com puts above 4 million homes.
