Most first-time homebuyers are renters, and one way to measure the difficulty of switching from renting to owning is by comparing how much the typical home costs versus the typical annual rent in a given location.
Nationally, median home prices are 18.27 times the median annual rent, or put another way, typical homes cost just over 18 years’ worth of rent payments in current dollars, according to an analysis conducted by Wendell Cox, a principal at Demographia, a St. Louis-based public policy firm.
But in several states, including Colorado, the “cost of moving up” multiple is larger. In Hawaii, the ratio is 33.8 or nearly 85% higher than the U.S. ratio. That is extreme, but in California, the ratio is 29.3, or 60.7% higher. In Massachusetts, the cost of moving up is 40.4% higher than the national average.
States in the Rocky Mountain region and Pacific Northwest dominate the remainder of the top 10 list, with the cost of moving up 39.3% higher in Montana, 37.2% higher in Utah, 36.5% higher in Oregon and 32.3% higher in Idaho. Then comes Colorado, in the eighth spot, with a cost of moving up ratio 31.5% higher than the U.S. average, followed by Wyoming at 30.5% higher.
“There is a general perception that house prices are higher where rents are higher. That is true. However, median house prices measured at the market (metropolitan area) level, tend to rise (at a) much greater rate than rents among the more expensive states,” said Cox in a blog post on the website Newgeography.
Median house price has risen nearly three times as fast as the median gross rents in the U.S. between 1969 and 2019, according to U.S. Census Bureau data that Cox studied. The analysis didn’t include the extreme run-up in home values seen during the pandemic.
“The house price increases that have happened since 2019 are likely to make the cost of moving up even more prohibitive, especially in the most expensive states,” Cox said.
But it is hard to draw a direct line between a higher ratio and the attractiveness of a location. California has the second-highest ratio of home prices to rents and also the second-highest net outflow of residents last decade after New York. Texas which has the fifth-lowest ratio, half of California’s, was in second place for net migration, after Florida.
That said, high-ratio states like Colorado, Idaho, Washington and Oregon remain popular destinations for those relocating, which has helped push home prices higher. Although Colorado residents like to complain that the state is being overrun, migration slowed sharply in the second half of the past decade and gains are behind those of prior decades, said state demographer Elizabeth Garner earlier this month.
Home construction, after outstripping demand in the ’00s, failed to keep pace, causing home prices to rise.
“When we overbuild it is a problem, and when we underbuild it is a problem,” she said.
