Mortgage Affordability by Metro, 2026: Qualifying-Income Thresholds Against HUD Area Median Income

Qualifying-income thresholds and housing-cost burden for 25 large U.S. metropolitan areas, expressed against HUD FY2026 area median family income (the figure HUD uses as the area median income, AMI, for its income limits). Version 2 correction. In version 1 the AMI column matched HUD's FY2026 Income Limits for none of the 25 metros. Version 2 takes every AMI from HUD's FY2026 Section 8 income-limits file (Section8-FY26.xlsx, column median2026, effective May 1, 2026) for the HUD metro area containing each metro's principal county, and recomputes the monthly AMI, the affordability ratio, the PITI share and the 28%-rule flag. Version 2 also recomputes the payment and income columns from National Association of Realtors Q3 2026 median prices (preliminary), which are not redistributed here. Every changed cell is listed in CHANGELOG.md. For each metro the dataset reports the modelled monthly PITI on a median-priced home, the annual gross income required to qualify under the conventional 28% housing-ratio rule, and the ratio of that required income to the area's median family income. A ratio above 1.0 indicates that a family earning the area median cannot qualify for the median-priced home in that metro. Method. PITI is modelled on a 30-year fixed mortgage at 20% down, using the Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey rate of 7.28% for the week of October 1, 2026 as the baseline, with taxes and insurance at 1.5% of price a year. Required qualifying income follows from that payment under the 28% convention. Three columns (monthly AMI, PITI share of AMI, and the 28%-rule flag) are computed from the others and are reproducible from the file alone. Sources. HUD FY2026 Income Limits (public domain) and Freddie Mac PMMS, week of October 1, 2026 (public domain). Input status when this version was prepared: HUD FY2026 is current; the upstream median prices are NAR's Q3 2026 table dated October 29, 2026 (marked preliminary by NAR); the PMMS rate is the week of October 1, 2026, and the survey read 7.24% for the week of October 29, 2026. Deliberate exclusion. The underlying analysis consumes National Association of Realtors metro median price data. That series is proprietary, so the median-price and down-payment columns are omitted from this deposit rather than redistributed under CC BY. Limits. 25 metros, not a national sample. HUD's median family income is an administrative estimate for a HUD metro area (some are sub-areas, e.g. Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall = Miami-Dade County), not an observed household-income distribution, so comparing required income to it is a benchmark rather than a count of qualifying households. PITI is modelled, not observed. A single weekly rate is applied across all metros.