MAYBE YOU COULD BUY A HOUSE IN THE MIDWEST

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, January 9, 1992                   TAG: 9201090350
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: C5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium
MAYBE YOU COULD BUY A HOUSE IN THE MIDWEST
Kansas City, Milwaukee and Detroit had the most affordable housing among the nation's largest cities in late summer, according to an industry survey released Wednesday.
The toughest markets for a typical family were San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York.
The National Association of Home Builders said its Housing Opportunity Index found the 20 most affordable housing markets in the June-September quarter were in the Midwest and South. California had 17 of the 20 least-affordable areas.
Roanoke ranked as the 74th most affordable of the 191 markets included in the survey. The association said 68.9 percent of the homes sold in the Roanoke area during last year's third quarter were within reach of the median-income household at the prevailing mortgage interest rates.
Among other regional markets included in the study: the Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Newport News metro area ranked 80th with 67.7 percent of the homes affordable to median-income families; Richmond-Petersburg was 62nd at 70.9 percent; the Washington, D.C., metro area including Northern Virginia was 131st with 55.2 percent; and Greensboro-Winston-Salem, N.C., was 128th with 56.5 percent.
The index showed trends little changed from the April-June quarter, with the most affordable markets centered in smaller inland metropolitan areas and the least affordable in the larger, urban markets in California and the Northeast.
The index is designed to measure the ability of a typical family to purchase a home. The survey included 459,476 sales in 191 metropolitan areas.
The builders said the lowest mortgage rates in nearly 20 years helped boost the typical American family's home buying power by 13 percent in the last year.
"Households earning the national median income were able to afford to buy 33.9 percent of the homes offered for sale nationwide, up from 30 percent for the same period last year," said association president Mark Ellis Tipton, a Raleigh, N.C., developer.
"The huge jump in affordability was primarily due to the combination of falling interest rates and extremely competitive home prices," he added.
Jackson, Mich., moved from third place in the April-June index to the top of the third-quarter affordability list with an 88.7 percent rating, up from 88.3 percent.
The builders said the median income in Jackson was $36,800 and the median home price was $60,000. The median means that half of the incomes totaled more and half less and that half of the homes cost more and half less.
According to mortgage underwriting standards used for calculating the index, at the prevailing interest rate of 9.25 percent, a household could afford to buy a home costing 2.8 times its annual income, or $103,040.
San Francisco remained at the bottom of the affordability list with a 10.6 percent rating, up from 9.2 percent in the second quarter. The median income there was $49,900, the median home price was $275,000 and the typical family could afford a home costing $139,720.
Other large cities at the bottom of the list were No. 3 Los Angeles, 12.9 percent, and No. 5 New York, 14.3 percent.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB