Special to the Daily Record
The Jacksonville area is Florida’s most affordable housing market among the state’s major metropolitan areas, according to the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index for the first quarter of 2005.
In the Jacksonville market of Duval, Nassau, Clay and St. Johns counties, 67.3 percent of homes sold in the first quarter were affordable to families earning that median household income of $57,500. The median price of all homes sold in the area during that time was $165,000.
The state’s high prices, however, were reflected in another statistic: Jacksonville ranks 64th nationally and 18th in the south.
“Today’s numbers how that our fight to keep housing affordable in Northeast Florida continues to allow more people to realize homeownership,” said Bryan Lendry, president of Brylen Homes and the Northeast Florida Builders Association.
In Florida, Jacksonville is followed by Tampa-St. Petersburg (61.8), Orlando (54.8), Fort Lauderdale (46.2), West Palm Beach (43.2) and Miami-Miami Beach (26.3) in the state’s affordability ranking of major markets.
The index is a measure of the percentage of homes sold in a given area that are affordable to families earning that area’s median income during a specific quarter. The index now incorpoates newly revised HUD data for household income, which was previously underestimated in some markets, and revised property tax and insurance data in several metro markets.
The metropolitan statistical area around Youngstown, Warren and Boardman, Ohio, which includes some neighborhoods across the Pennsylvania border, was the most affordable major metro nationwide and the third-most affordable out of all statistical areas that were ranked by the HOI. Also near the top of the affordability scale among major metros with populations over 500,000 were Grand Rapids-Wyoming, Mich.; Dayton, Ohio; and Buffalo-Niagara Falls, N.Y., in that order.
“On a national basis, housing affordability posted a moderate decline in the first quarter of this year versus the final quarter of 2004, due mostly to higher home prices and a slight uptick in home mortgage rates,” said Roger Day, president of Orange Park-based Rosewood Homes.
Looking at smaller metros with populations under 500,000, Ocala led the state at 69.5 with a median income of $52,400 and sales price of $117,000 followed by Tallahassee at 69.1 with a median family income of $52,200 and sales price of $150,000.
Lima, Ohio rated tops for housing affordability and was the most affordable statistical area ranked overall..
The decline in nationwide affordability was mostly attributable to the fact that the median price of all homes sold in the first quarter of 2005 rose $6,000 from the end of 2004, bringing it back to where it was in the third quarter of last year, at $225,000.
At the other end of the affordability spectrum, the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale market in California was rated the least affordable major metropolitan area with a population greater than 500,000. There, just 5.2 percent of homes sold in the beginning of this year were affordable to families earning the median income of $54,500.
—May 25, 2005