Housing Affordability by Metropolitan Area: Determinant Indicators of Housing Affordability

The purpose of this research is to articulate the relationships that exist between housing affordability by metropolitan areas and the following variables: housing costs, income, educational attainment, population density, population growth rate, and employment composition by economic sector (professional, sales and office, and service). This research contributes to the existing affordability literature by considering all of these variables simultaneously through a regression equation based on US Census data. The findings indicate that housing affordability is geographically differentiated with the West Coast metropolitan areas being the least affordable and the South Central metropolitan areas being most affordable. Some of the predictors of housing affordability appeared to be educational attainment, employment mix, and population density based on correlation and regression results.