Housing Opportunity Index

Okay, this is what I was looking for yesterday. The National Association of Home Builders and Wells Fargo have been calculating a Housing Opportunity Index (HOI) since 1991. Their findings for the third quarter of 2009 are here.

With a median Tucson family income of $57,500 and a median sale price of $159,000, the median-priced house is affordable to 73.4% of the families in Tucson.

Tucson's HOI hit its low in the third quarter of 2006, when only 30.2% of the families in Tucson could afford the median-priced house.

Obviously, a home purchase is affordable to more Tucsonans now because the home prices are a lot lower than they were three years ago. We also need to consider that the HOI is a function of mortgage interest rates, so the unbelievably low interest rates (below 5%) are a significant contributor to housing affordability.

Tucson's HOI is 129th out of 227 metropolitan areas studied.