WASHINGTON – The falling median price of single-family homes is helping potential consumers that may have previously been priced out of homeownership, according to a national housing index.
The Providence-New Bedford-Fall River metropolitan has twice this year topped the 50-percent mark for the number of potential homebuyers who can afford to buy a median-priced new or existing home, according to the most recent statistics from the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index.
Nationally, 56.1 percent of all new and existing homes sold during the three-month period ending Sept. 30 were affordable to families earning the national median income of $61,500, according to NAHB.
Locally, 52.7 percent of homes sold last quarter are considered affordable for a family annually making $68,300, the third-quarter median income in the Providence-New Bedford-Fall River metro. The metro’s index numbers for the first two quarters of the year were 50.5 percent and 48.3 percent, respectively. Before this year, the index had not topped 50 percent since 2004 in the Providence-Fall River-New Bedford metro.
At the middle point of the housing boom, during second quarter of 2006, the index in the area had fallen so that just 19.6 percent of homes sold in the Providence-New Bedford-Fall River metro were affordable.
“If there is a silver lining to the crisis, it would be that some housing markets have become more affordable with a larger inventory to choose from,” NAHB Chairman Sandy Dunn said in a statement accompanying the statistics, released Monday. “But this is undeniably a crisis and Congress needs to act on housing stimulus to get the market moving again.”
