America's 10 most expensive cities to buy a home in 2026

A generation of Americans grew up believing that steady work and patient saving would produce a set of house keys in time. The keys now sit behind a door that keeps sliding away. Would-be buyers stay in rentals longer than they planned, postpone the milestones they once tied to owning property, and ask parents or grandparents to cover a down payment they cannot assemble on their own. Some stop looking. The decision says little about discipline or paycheck size, because the people abandoning the search hold solid jobs in the cities where they live and work.

Housing payments now swallow close to 40% of the typical U.S. buyer's income, a level that overshoots what lenders and financial planners treat as sustainable. The strain traces back to the pandemic buying frenzy, when ultra-low mortgage rates drove offers above asking month after month and lifted home values nationwide. Rates then climbed while those values held, and the two together locked median earners out of markets an earlier generation entered without much fuss. Three forces keep costs high: a chronic shortage of homes, restrictive zoning rules, and investors claiming a slice of the available stock. The shortage carries the most weight. Builders have trailed demand since the Great Recession, and the surge that followed drained what inventory remained. Supply has loosened as sellers list faster than buyers purchase, which narrows the distance between wages and prices in many metros, though a return to anything resembling normal will take years.

Redfin set out to map that divide city by city. The brokerage widened a June 2026 affordability study to take in 96 major metropolitan areas, measuring the share of income a median earner must set aside each month to carry a typical home. A market counts as unaffordable once that cost passes 35% of what the median household earns, with the math assuming 20% down, a 30-year mortgage, and standard taxes and fees. The figures behind the rankings come from multiple listing service records, U.S. Census Bureau counts, and Atlanta Federal Reserve data through June 2026. Seven of the 10 cities that surfaced sit in California, and the other three line the Atlantic coast. All 10 mark the costliest places in the country to buy a home.

Illustration: Quartz

San Francisco asks a median-earning household for 76.6% of its income to cover the payment on a typical home, the steepest toll any major market in the country takes. Local paychecks run large by any standard, with a median household income of $162,118, and they still land far short of what the market charges. The median sale price reaches $1,724,835, more than double what a buyer pays in New York and just under three times the figure in Miami, which prices out even households clearing six figures.

Buyer appetite in San Francisco keeps rising for a reason no other city here shares. Fortunes from the artificial intelligence industry have flowed into the Bay Area economy, adding a class of well-capitalized bidders to the contest for the same thin inventory everyone else chases. Rival coastal markets wrestle with scarce land and restrictive building rules on their own. San Francisco stacks a fresh wave of capital on top of those identical limits, and the result shows up in both the price tag and the share of a paycheck housing swallows.

The share of income a median household must surrender to housing climbed 1.5 percentage points over the past year in San Francisco, and no other city on this list appears among the markets where buying grew harder. Climbing from the highest starting point in the country makes the increase bite deeper, since the gap widened where it stretched furthest. Several California neighbors moved the opposite way over the same 12 months, shaving points off what their residents owe each month.

San Francisco's affordability problem runs on a different engine than the nine markets below it. Cooling demand and fuller listing rosters have started pulling income shares down elsewhere on the list. Wealth pooling in a single industry keeps lifting San Francisco prices against that national current, a divergence that leaves San Francisco the lone high-cost market where the squeeze tightens while the rest ease.

Illustration: Quartz

Anaheim households surrender 71.6% of their income to cover the payment on a typical home, a share that only San Francisco exceeds. The city sits inside a narrow band of three markets where the monthly mortgage bill runs to at least 70% of a median paycheck. Anaheim's median household income of $126,178 lands well above the national middle, and the median sale price of $1,271,194 erases the cushion at the closing table.

Los Angeles earners take home roughly $28,000 less each year than their Anaheim counterparts, yet they commit a smaller slice of income, 69.7%, to housing. The gap sits in the price column. A median-priced Anaheim home costs about $324,000 more than its Los Angeles equivalent, enough to swamp the earnings edge Orange County buyers carry into the market.

San Jose homes trade for nearly $344,000 more than Anaheim homes while asking less of a paycheck, 65.9%. Median income in the San Jose metro reaches $176,401, about $50,000 above Anaheim's, and the extra earnings cover the price difference. Sticker values alone do not decide where a market lands among the country's least affordable. The distance between what residents earn and what sellers ask does.

Strict zoning rules, high land costs, and sparse construction hold supply down across coastal California, and Anaheim lives with all three. Developers who might add density near the region's job centers run into local limits and acquisition costs that make the math unattractive, so supply grows at a trickle while demand from the Southern California labor market keeps arriving. Concentrated wealth sharpens the squeeze, putting buyers who can clear seven-figure prices against households earning the local median.

A household at Anaheim's median keeps 28 cents of every dollar once the mortgage payment clears, leaving retirement savings and emergencies to compete for the remainder. Ownership in Anaheim has narrowed toward the highest earners, and buyers priced out of that bracket fall back on the workarounds common across the country, long-term renting and family help with a down payment.

Illustration: Quartz

Los Angeles households spend 69.7% of their income on the mortgage for a typical home, a burden they shoulder on the smallest median income among the six cities at the top of this list. Earnings there reach $97,775, about $28,000 below Anaheim's and nearly $79,000 below San Jose's, while the median sale price climbs to $947,164. Buyers there chase near-million-dollar listings on paychecks smaller than those in any other California market on this list.

Affordability in Los Angeles improved by 5.0 percentage points over the past year, one of the steepest retreats in required income share anywhere in the country. Among these 10 cities, only San Jose, which shed 7.4 points, and Oxnard, which shed 5.5, moved further. The easing traces to a change in the balance of supply, where more owners list homes than buyers purchase them, and the resulting inventory strips away the bidding pressure that defined the pandemic years.

Los Angeles and New York land within $512 of each other on median earnings, yet the Los Angeles median sale price runs about $104,000 higher, and its income share tops New York's by 4.3 percentage points. Los Angeles also undercuts the price of every California city above it on this list, trailing Anaheim by more than $324,000 and San Francisco by nearly $778,000, and it takes a bigger bite out of local wages than San Jose does, where homes cost $668,000 more. Sorted by price alone, Los Angeles would sit sixth among these 10 cities, behind Oakland and San Diego, two markets where the monthly payment swallows a much smaller share of local pay.

Los Angeles required close to 75% of a median income a year ago, which frames the current figure as progress starting from an extreme. A second decline of the same size would still send 64.7% of the typical paycheck to the loan. Easing at that pace leaves years between a median Los Angeles salary and a median Los Angeles home, which keeps the listings moving among buyers who arrive with family help or equity from an earlier purchase.

Illustration: Quartz

San Jose households must commit 65.9% of their earnings to the payment on a median-priced home, and they do it on the biggest paychecks of any city here. The local median household income reaches $176,401, some $14,000 above San Francisco's and more than double Miami's. Home values erase that cushion. A typical sale closes at $1,615,164, some $110,000 under San Francisco's and the second-highest price among these 10 markets, a figure that outruns even the local pay scale.

Affordability in San Jose improved by 7.4 percentage points over the past year, the deepest 12-month drop in income burden among the country's priciest cities. Oxnard at 5.5 points and Los Angeles at 5.0 registered the next-largest gains on this list, and both sit further down it. Swelling inventory accounts for much of the shift, as sellers list homes faster than buyers absorb them, while wages climb at a pace home prices no longer match.

San Jose's earnings advantage buys less ground than the raw figure suggests. A household there takes home about $78,600 more each year than one in Los Angeles, yet the typical house costs roughly $668,000 more, so the extra pay covers only part of the distance. The gap between the two cities' income shares narrows to 3.8 percentage points, a slim return on the fattest salaries among these 10 cities.

A year ago the same purchase consumed roughly 73% of a median San Jose income. Even after the largest easing on this list, the city takes a bigger bite than New York, San Diego, Miami, Oxnard, Oakland, or Newark, six places where home prices cooled less over the same stretch. Only San Francisco, Anaheim, and Los Angeles leave a household with less.

The speed of San Jose's slide measures how far values overshot wages in the first place. A market has to dislocate on an extraordinary scale before it can shed 7.4 points in a single year and still demand two-thirds of a six-figure salary for an ordinary house.

Illustration: Quartz

New York asks 65.4% of a median household's income to cover the payment on a typical home, the heaviest demand any market outside California places on its residents. Households across the metro earn $98,287 at the median, while the typical home changes hands for $843,474. A buyer on that salary gives up close to two-thirds of it before spending a dollar on food, transit, or child care.

Three cities with lighter burdens sell costlier homes than New York does. San Diego's median sale price reaches $952,149, Oakland's $977,074, and Oxnard's $871,391, each above New York's, and each leaves residents committing a smaller slice of their pay to housing. Paychecks explain the inversion. San Diego households take home $115,304 at the median and Oakland households $139,407, enough to carry a bigger mortgage than New York wages support.

Scarce land shapes the New York number as much as buyer appetite does. Developers in a built-out metro find few parcels worth the asking price, and zoning rules across the region cap the density that would let new apartments and houses arrive in quantity. Concentrated wealth finishes the job, since the metro's affluent buyers set the bidding for a housing stock that cannot grow on command. A metro unable to spread outward or build upward keeps its existing homes in permanent short supply.

Los Angeles households live on $97,775 at the median, within $512 of the New York figure, yet face a median sale price of $947,164, more than $100,000 above what New York buyers pay. New York converts that six-figure price advantage into 4.3 percentage points of relief, landing at 65.4% against the 69.7% Los Angeles households shoulder. A cheaper sticker price buys thin comfort once wages flatten at the same level in both markets. New York households face a typical home priced at more than eight times their annual earnings, which leaves mid-range buyers chasing homes that only the city's richest households can finance.

Illustration: Quartz

A San Diego household earning the area's median of $115,304 must direct 59.5% of that income toward the payment on a typical home, the sixth-heaviest load among the country's major housing markets. The median sale price of $952,149 lands within $5,000 of the Los Angeles figure, placing San Diego in the same near-million-dollar bracket as the state's largest city.

Los Angeles buyers part with 10.2 percentage points more of their income than San Diego buyers do on a matching price tag, and wages account for the split. A typical San Diego household earns $17,529 more each year than its Los Angeles counterpart, enough to move the city three spots down the ranking and nowhere near comfort. New York inverts the pattern. Its median sale price of $843,474 trails San Diego's by more than $100,000, yet New York households give up 65.4% of their earnings because the $98,287 they take home falls short of what San Diego workers collect.

Coastal geography and local rules keep San Diego's housing stock from growing fast enough to meet the people who want it. The shoreline caps the supply of buildable land near the job centers and beaches where demand concentrates, zoning rules hold down the density developers can put on the parcels that remain, and land prices erase the incentive to break ground. Wealth flowing into the region competes for the homes that already exist and bids them higher. Seven of the 10 priciest metros in the country sit in California, and San Diego faces the same squeeze that lifted its neighbors above it.

Oakland homes sell for a median $977,074, above San Diego's, yet an Oakland household devotes 51.8% of its income to its mortgage because it earns $139,407. San Diego shows that a six-figure median income no longer shields a coastal market from severe strain. The $115,304 a typical household collects here would stretch far across most of the country, and the 40 cents of each dollar left over must cover food, transportation, savings, and everything else.

Illustration: Quartz

Miami households hand over 53.6% of their income to cover the payment on a typical home, and they do it on the thinnest earnings of any city on this list. Median household income in the metro reaches $77,854, $19,921 below the next-smallest figure among these 10 markets and less than half what San Francisco households collect. The median sale price of $576,124 sits at the bottom of the group too, trailing Newark by $121,121 and San Francisco by more than $1.1 million.

Price explains little about why Miami belongs in this company. Oxnard homes cost $295,267 more at the median, yet an Oxnard household devotes a smaller portion of what it takes home, 52.7% against Miami's 53.6%. San Diego buyers meet a median price of $952,149, a tag $376,025 higher, and give up 59.5% of what they earn, a gap of under six percentage points. Income sets Miami's position on this list. A median under $78,000 leaves local households exposed to prices that would count as moderate in any California market here.

Three cities on this list sit outside California, and Miami stands as the only one away from the Northeast corridor that New York and Newark share. Coastal metros on both seaboards hold most of the country's costliest housing, a pattern that took decades to form as supply fell behind demand. Restrictive zoning codes and land too expensive to build on have kept homebuilders away from these hubs, thinning the stock available to anyone shopping today. Concentrated wealth lifts what sellers can ask past what a median paycheck supports. Miami shoulders those pressures on a wage base that trails Anaheim's by $48,324 and San Jose's by $98,547.

Miami households carry a burden 1.8 percentage points heavier than Oakland's, though Oakland homes cost $400,950 more at the median. Cheaper housing buys Miami residents no margin. Any improvement here would have to come from wages, because prices sit lower than in the other nine markets on this list.

Illustration: Quartz

Oxnard hands 52.7% of a typical household's income to the monthly payment on a median-priced home, a burden that persists even after one of the sharpest corrections any high-cost market logged over the past year. Households there earn $119,133, more than their counterparts in San Diego, Los Angeles, or New York, and the median sale price of $871,391 undercuts every California market ranked above Oxnard. Ventura County buyers surrender more than half of each paycheck to the mortgage before they cover food, transportation, child care, or savings.

Affordability in Oxnard eased by 5.5 percentage points year over year, a swing only San Jose exceeded among the 10 cities here. Los Angeles trimmed its own figure by 5.0 points, which leaves the three California markets as the improving core of this group and signals that the state's coastal corridor is backing away from its pandemic-era extremes. Inventory has swelled because sellers now outnumber the buyers willing to transact at current prices. Shut-out shoppers hold back, which caps growth in home values and gives paychecks a chance to gain ground.

Oxnard's typical home costs $399,803 less than Anaheim's and $743,773 less than San Jose's, yet the three cities sit in the same group of 10. San Diego households earn $3,829 less than Oxnard's and shoulder a median price $80,758 higher, which pushes their income share to 59.5%. Oakland runs the arithmetic in the other direction, pairing a $977,074 median price with a $139,407 median income to produce a 51.8% share, a hair lighter than Oxnard's despite housing stock that costs $105,683 more.

Oxnard's relief arrives because prices have climbed slower than local paychecks, reversing the pandemic-era pattern that pushed the city into this group of 10. Another year of easing at the recent pace would drop the city's share under 48%, a figure no household would call cheap, though it would set Oxnard apart from the three California markets where the demand on income tops 69%.

Illustration: Quartz

A median-earning Oakland household spends 51.8% of its income on the monthly payment for a typical home, 1.3 percentage points more than a Newark household gives up and the second-lightest draw among these 10 markets. The median sale price there reaches $977,074, the fourth-highest figure on the list and roughly $23,000 short of $1 million.

A median household income of $139,407 explains why Oakland sits this far down. Only San Jose and San Francisco pay their typical households more, and Oakland's median earnings run about $24,000 ahead of San Diego's and more than $41,000 ahead of Los Angeles's. Both of those cities carry cheaper homes than Oakland does, yet each takes a bigger bite out of local pay, 59.5% in San Diego and 69.7% in Los Angeles. Miami proves the point from the other end. Its typical home costs roughly $401,000 less than Oakland's, and a median income of $77,854 still pushes the Miami share to 53.6%, above what Oakland households face.

San Francisco, one bridge away, pulls 24.8 percentage points more from a median paycheck, claiming 76.6% of it. San Jose's median price of $1,615,164 clears Oakland's by more than $600,000, and even Silicon Valley earnings of $176,401 leave households there spending 65.9% of their income, well above Oakland's share. Oakland's standing therefore owes as much to the $638,000 price gap between the two cities as to its own strong wages.

Strict zoning rules, costly land, and concentrated wealth have discouraged homebuilding across the coastal metros that fill most of this list, and the resulting shortage reaches past the Bay Area's marquee addresses. Supply that never caught up with demand pushed Oakland's typical home price past $975,000, a level that leaves even a well-paid household committing more than half its earnings to housing.

Oakland's place near the foot of this list traces to its paychecks. Homes in Oakland cost more than homes in Los Angeles or San Diego, so a buyer carrying a paycheck typical of either Southern California market would find the climb steeper after moving north.