In the Media

Black applicants who are granted mortgages face higher interest rates, paying more than white homeowners with lower incomes, the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University has found.

According to numbers from the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard, homeowners need to make $48,000 more than they did even a year ago just to afford the average Greater Boston home.

"Just 1 in 4 income-eligible renters receives rental assistance, and with nearly 20 million cost-burdened renter households there just isn't enough support to go around... That's part of why we're in the current crisis, that incomes just aren't high enough to keep up with the rent increases and there just isn't enough support" says Whitney Airgood-Obrycki.

Many forces have combined to create a rental market that's setting records for a lack of vacancies and high costs. A big one is a historic shortage of housing.

Home prices and rents hit record highs last year and prospective home buyers need to earn $181,254 to afford a home in Greater Boston — double the region's median income — according to a new housing report from Harvard.

“Beyond six years, it is hard to probe whether the occupancy or behavior of the occupants isn’t impacting the system. It’s a little harder to find causality,’’ said Carlos Martín, project director of the Remodeling Futures Program at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

It's becoming more difficult to buy a home, and a recent study by Harvard University investigated the reasons why.

The record run-up in home prices and rents exacerbated the affordable housing crisis in the US, and rising interest rates stand to make it even worse, according to Harvard University's annual State of the Nation's Housing Report released Wednesday.

Bostonians are well aware of the pricey local housing market, but a new report is laying out an eye-opening salary requirement for aspiring homeowners.

Harvard’s estimates assume a down payment of 3.5 percent on a 30-year fixed rate mortgage, and that buyers would spend no more than 31 percent of their income on mortgage payments.