Asheville NC affordability metric
It comes as no surprise to anyone that the past several years, 2022 through Q1 of 2024, witnessed the largest housing bubble in US history, leading to home prices that have priced out many first-time home buyers from the market. The steep price tags on homes, coupled with higher mortgage rates, have also resulted in the lowest home buyer sentiment in over a decade, as reported by Fannie Mae’s home purchase Sentiment Index.
In Asheville, North Carolina, the housing bubble has caused home prices to skyrocket, despite a median household income of roughly $60,000 according to the U.S. Census. For someone earning just the median income, purchasing a $422,000 home would require spending seven times their annual income.
This ratio, known as the household income to home prices (or price-to-earnings P/E ratio), serves as an affordability metric. By mapping this value over time in Asheville, we can visualize how housing affordability has evolved over the years.
Home Price to Wages Ratio for Asheville North Carolina
- P / E Ratio:
- Date Range:
- Median Wage:
- Home Price:
The graph above uses annual wage data from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, and the median home prices from Zillows ZHVI data series which tracks home prices. Each data point represents average home prices and reported wages for a quarterly period in a year going back to 2002. The fluctuations from peaks to valleys represent the seasonal differences in home values.
Until the value comes close to the long term average (the dotted horizontal line on the graph), affordability and home prices are out of reach for the average household in Asheville NC.
Thanks to Reventure Consulting for inspiration in creating this graph. If you are interested in tracking data on the US housing market I highly recommend Nick Gerli’s YouTube channel and you can track data yourself using the Reventure app from Reventure Consulting.
About this graph
This graph was build using D3.js, a JavaScript library for visualizing data. It was written in Typescript, unit tested with Jest, and linted by ESLint and Stylelint. The build system is using Vite.
You can view the source code on GitHub.
Updates
Updates to the data in the graph will be made periodically.