You Must Be In 'The Six-Figure Club' To Afford A House The latest housing data shows soaring mortgage rates, elevated prices, and limited inventory continue to worsen the affordability crisis. New data from real estate brokerage Redfin Corp. indicates homebuyers now need a whopping $114,000 salary to afford a median-priced home of $412,000 in September - assuming a 30-year fixed mortgage rate of 7.2% with 20% down. This is a near doubling in salary needed to afford a home since Covid, and since inflation wiped out real wages for two years, more Americans than ever can no longer afford the 'American Dream' of a single-family house with a white picket fence, instead, trapped in a cycle of renting. Redfin's next report, for this month, will likely show another jump in the salary needed to afford an average home because the 30-year fixed mortgage rate has risen 80 percentage points to 8% . In 2012, the salary Americans needed to afford the average home was about $38,...