Mar 24, 2016  |  MarketWatch.com

It’s not just the coasts that are getting pricier.

It may come as no surprise that homes in Detroit are the most-affordable and those in New York are the least.

When it comes to priciest housing markets, a new report points to the usual coastal suspects.

But the first quarter Home Affordability Index from data provider RealtyTrac has some other sobering realities about housing affordability – or lack of it.

Home price growth outpaced wage growth in most counties, RealtyTrac said. And the problem is getting worse: the number of metros that are growing less affordable according to their own historical standards grew.

RealtyTrac’s affordability index takes the percentage of average wages in a particular metro that’s needed to purchase a median-priced home in that area, with an average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage and a 3 percent down payment.

By absolute terms, those measurements found that the top five least-affordable counties were all in New York or California.

Least-Affordable County Average wages needed for median-priced home
Kings County, New York (Brooklyn) 120.4%
Marin County, California (San Francisco area) 109.2%
Santa Cruz County, California (Santa Cruz metro) 106.9%
New York County, New York (Manhattan) 105.1%
San Francisco County, California 95.3%

 

The most-affordable counties were more scattered:

Most-Affordable County Average wages needed for median-priced home
Wayne County, Michigan (Detroit) 8.5%
Baltimore County, Maryland 9.2%
Clayton County, Georgia (Atlanta metro) 10.1%
Bay County, Michigan 12.3%
Rock Island County, Illinois 12.3%

 

And across the nation, nine percent of areas surveyed were less affordable now than the historically normal level for that region over the past ten years. That’s up from two percent a year ago.

Nationally, the average wage earner would have had to spend 30.2% of monthly wages to make mortgage payments on the national median-priced home. That was also up from a year ago, when it would have taken 26.4% of wages.

“Home prices are floating out of reach for average wage earners in a growing number of U.S. housing markets,” said Daren Blomquist, RealtyTrac senior vice president, in a release.

And prices aren’t likely to come back to earth any time soon. RealtyTrac also found that home price increases are outpacing wage gains in 61% of markets.