Home buyers are finally getting what they’ve long hoped for: More homes are coming onto the market and rising from recent lows. But too many house hunters are finding it’s the wrong type of homes for sale.
A new joint report from the National Association of REALTORS® and Realtor.com® finds a “mismatch” between what’s for sale and what buyers can truly afford, hitting middle-income households the hardest.
For example, the analysis found that middle-income households that earn about $75,000 per year can only access about one-quarter of listings nationwide. In a more balanced market, they’d be able to access 44% of all listings. But to reach that point, the market needs about 300,000 more homes for sale priced under $261,000, which is considered the affordability threshold for that income tier, according to the report.
Further, the report finds inventory constraints among more income levels. Buyers earning $50,000 annually are only able to afford about 9% of listings nationally, and those earning about $100,000 yearly can afford 39% of listings today. Buyers in these income segments tend to traditionally account for the largest share of home purchases—but the housing market is still undersupplied.
“Too much of the inventory available today remains concentrated at higher price points, leaving a shortage of options for entry-level and middle-income buyers,” says Nadia Evangelou, NAR’s principal economist and director of real estate research.
It’s preventing more home sales and the market from fully recovering to pre-pandemic levels, researchers note.
That said, the new report doesn’t discount notable progress over the last year: “Housing supply is growing and affordability is improving,” Evangelou says, with the report showing that the roughly 100 major markets tracked all showed improvement or remained flat over the last year, with Madison, Wis., being the sole exception in reversing its previous year’s improvement.
Still, the U.S. housing market faces “a structural mismatch between the homes available for sale and what buyers can afford.”
Why Not Just Build More?
Economists say it’s not as easy as the housing market building itself out of a prolonged housing shortage.
“Increasing supply alone will not be enough to restore normal market activity,” Evangelou says. “We need more homes at price points that match the incomes of today’s buyers, particularly in the entry-level and middle-market segments.”
But some markets may be doing that better than others.
Measuring Progress
NAR and Realtor.com® debuted a Listing-Income Alignment Score to measure how well the distribution of listings matches the local incomes in an area, pinpointing which markets are showing improvement and which ones are falling short. A Listing-Income Alignment Score of 100% indicates listings are well distributed across incomes, while lower scores indicate homes skewing toward higher price points.
Nationally, the Listing-Income Alignment Score was 74.9%, as of March 2026, an improvement from the 66.7% last year but remaining below the pre-pandemic baseline of 84.4%.
The latest score indicates that the majority of households can access only about three-quarters of housing opportunities that they’d be able to in a more balanced market.
“The improvement in our Listing-Income Alignment Score over the past year is encouraging, but the data makes clear that more inventory alone won’t be enough to unlock the housing market,” says Danielle Hale, Realtor.com®’s chief economist. “A true recovery requires homes at the right price points. Until the supply of entry-level and middle-market homes grows to meet demand, many buyers will continue to find the market out of reach despite headline improvements in affordability and inventory.”
Of 100 major metro markets tracked by Realtor.com® and NAR, the highest number of housing markets considered “aligned”—where home prices are closely tied to local incomes—were concentrated the most heavily in the Midwest.
The five most “aligned” markets in the country were:
- Toledo, Ohio: 107.4%
- St. Louis: 106%
- Akron, Ohio: 105%
- Pittsburgh: 102.6%
- Detroit: 102.4%
Meanwhile, using the same scoring metric, the following metros were found to be the “most constrained” or least aligned markets, where home prices remain farthest from local incomes:
- Los Angeles: 39.4%
- San Diego: 45%
- Oxnard, Calif.: 46.8%
- Providence, R.I.: 50.5%
- Boise City, Idaho: 53.2%
Some markets are making strides toward improvement. They may have had some of the fastest price appreciation during the pandemic housing boom, but are rebalancing, with a greater number of homes coming on the market, price growth moderating, and buyers finding slightly more negotiating power than in recent years. While these markets may not be balanced yet, particularly for middle-income buyers, they are recovering at some of the highest rates annually in the country:
- Lakeland, Fla.: 77.1%, up 18.3 percentage points
- McAllen, Texas: 68.8%, up 14.7 percentage points
- Las Vegas: 66%, up 14 percentage points
- New Orleans: 83.3%, up 13.2 percentage points
- Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fla.: 66.1%, up 13 percentage points
Learn about the latest inventory conditions in your market.
