In the Media

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.

According to a new Harvard report, rising interest rates are just one of the factors pushing housing towards an inflection point.

From 1990-2019, the US added 13.3 million rental units. However, the number of those renting at the lowest end of the market fell by 3.7 million.

“Record-breaking home price appreciation, solid home sales, and high incomes are all contributing to stronger remodeling activity in our nation’s major metros, especially in the South and West,” said Sophia Wedeen, a researcher in the Remodeling Futures Program at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

But Black political hopefuls hoping to kickstart their careers outside Boston face an uphill battle to secure elected office in the suburbs, said Sharon Cornelissen, a postdoctoral fellow who has studied the migration of Black Bostonians at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. “Just because people are displaced to suburban cities doesn’t mean they’ll get political power,” Cornelissen said. “It hasn’t been transferred from the wealthy, white old-timers to the new groups that have made a home.”