Most Affordable Zip Codes

That figure also doesn’t paint much of a picture of the sheer range in house prices across the country. Sure, we know that homes in the sun-dappled states of Hawaii and California tend to carry much higher price tags than any other. We also know that the average property in glitzy cities like New York and San Francisco goes for hundreds of thousands of dollars more than in a rural town.

But how much do house prices change on a neighborhood-to-neighborhood level? And can the people who actually live in these neighborhoods afford to buy a house at all? To find out, American Home Shield went in search of the most and least affordable ZIP codes for local residents to buy a home in the U.S.

What We Did

We first used a U.S. Census databank to retrieve the population of every ZIP code in the U.S. with more than 10,000 residents. For each ZIP code, we then gathered the median home price (from Zillow) and the median household income (from U.S. Census data). We then divided each ZIP code’s median home value by the median household income, giving us a home price-to-household income ratio. The last step was to rank the most affordable (i.e., the lowest ratio) and least affordable (highest ratio) ZIP codes in the country for locals to buy a house.

Key Findings

• The most affordable ZIP code in the country for locals to buy a house is 48505 in Flint, Michigan. The median house price is 0.95 times the median annual salary of a local worker.
• The least affordable is the 90210 ZIP code of Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, where a typical home costs 34.82 times what a typical local worker earns in a year.
• In New York City, two ZIP codes in the Bronx are the most (10462) and least (10454) affordable for local residents to buy a home.
• In Chicago, 60661 (Near West Side) is the most affordable ZIP code, while 60653 (Grand Boulevard) is the least affordable
• In Houston, 77345 (Kingwood) is the most affordable ZIP code, while 77024 (around Piney Point Village) is the least affordable.
• In Philadelphia, 19133 (Fairhill) is the most affordable ZIP code, while 77024 (parts of Ludlow) is the least affordable.