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housingMaster Score

Score

Housing Affordability

Composite affordability score blending rent, rent burden, home value, and home value to income.

Scale0-100

Higher values rank better for this score.

How It's Calculated

The latest published score is normalized to a 0-100 scale. The method below explains what the score rewards, with technical source metadata available for audit.

Scoring Method

How the ranking is built

Housing Affordability rewards places where typical rent, rent burden, home values, and home values relative to income are lower.

  1. 1

    Median rent, rent burden, median home value, and home value-to-income are each converted to population-weighted inverse percentile-rank scores where lower values score higher.

  2. 2

    The full observed ACS place distribution is used, weighted by population and with no p5/p95 clipping.

  3. 3

    The final score is 20% median rent, 30% rent burden, 20% median home value, and 30% home value-to-income.

Technical details
Score TypeMaster Score

Read from the current master score table for this criterion.

Ranking BasisSingle Score

The top 10 below ignore your blended relocation weights and sort only by Housing Affordability.

No source details available for this score.

What This Score Means

Housing Affordability rewards places where typical rent, rent burden, home values, and home values relative to income are lower.

Statistics Feeding This Score

  • Median gross rent

    Monthly ACS median gross rent, annualized before calculating rent burden.

    Source: U.S. Census American Community Survey 5-Year
  • Median household income

    ACS median household income, used as the denominator for rent and home-value burden.

    Source: U.S. Census American Community Survey 5-Year
  • Median home value

    ACS median value for owner-occupied housing units, used for the home value-to-income ratio.

    Source: U.S. Census American Community Survey 5-Year
  • Rent burden

    Derived as median gross rent times 12 divided by median household income.

    Source: Derived from ACS inputs
  • Home value-to-income

    Derived as median home value divided by median household income.

    Source: Derived from ACS inputs

Source Data

Source: U.S. Census American Community Survey 5-YearCensus ACS 5-year estimates for housing, income, population, occupation, education, and race/ethnicity inputs at place, county, or CBSA geography depending on the score.

Known Limits

  • ACS values are place-level estimates, not live listings or neighborhood-level prices.
  • Scores compare places against the current scored dataset using percentile-rank normalization, so the full observed ordering matters without p5/p95 clipping.
  • Affordability does not include taxes, insurance, utilities, commuting costs, or local wage differences beyond median household income.

Top 10 Locations

Ranked by Housing Affordability.

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