Can’t afford a home in Wisconsin? Here’s why.

Home affordability is at record lows in Wisconsin, and home sales in the state have taken a hit.  

That’s according to an August report from the Wisconsin Realtors Association, which began tracking home affordability in 2009. Those numbers show home sales dropped more than 8 percent compared to the same month last year. But prices still went up due to low inventory.

Home affordability is based on two factors: the price and what an average household can afford, which takes interest rates into account. Kurt Paulsen, professor of urban planning in the Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” that both home prices and interest rates are up right now...

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Leo’s notes: Wisconsin home affordability has fallen to its lowest level since tracking began in 2009, driven by the combination of high prices, elevated mortgage rates and persistently low inventory.The problem looks less like a temporary market cycle and more like a structural mismatch between the homes we're building and what working households can afford. The next phase of housing policy needs to focus on producing smaller, attainable homes at scale—through smaller lots, missing-middle housing, streamlined approvals and targeted infrastructure assistance. As we’ve stated time and time again, the state's new residential TIF legislature could be particularly important if communities use it to make entry-level ownership financially feasible rather than simply subsidizing development that the market would have produced anyway.

Ken Notes: We need to bring communities, developers, builders, manufacturers, lenders and more to the table to discuss NOT the problem but real solutions. The new housing TIF law is interesting and could create some affordable housing. Newer manufactured homes could lower costs. Missing middle homes for sale not rent could help. Rethinking Condos and ownership rather than apartments and rent would make a difference. There are solutions -- we just need to put the right team together to build and sell them.