The States Defying America’s Housing Crisis
Newsweek · C · trust 43/100
0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. A majority of Americans who have yet to step onto the property ladder believe that homeownership feels out of reach today, as housing costs have gone through the roof since the pandemic and have yet to come down. But in one region of the country, the dream of homeownership—which is languishing everywhere else—still survives.
The Midwest dominates a list of states where housing remains most accessible, according to a new analysis by Newsweek , accounting for eight of the 10 top states where homeownership is most within reach.
In its American Dream Index, Newsweek looked at all 33,772 U.S. ZIP codes through six pillars of opportunities considered crucial to achieve the American dream, including housing access. The score, from 0 to 100, answers the question, can a household on a normal income actually afford to live there?
Every score is built from public, free-to-use data. Newsweek used a combination of median home value-to-income ratio, gross rent as 35 percent or more of income, and owner-occupancy rate to determine housing access scores.
Only one Southern state and one Northeastern one were in the top 10 list with the highest scores, underscoring a growing divide between America’s affordable interior and its increasingly expensive coasts.
To understand the housing access score, readers can follow this quick rule of thumb:
Based on our analysis, these are the top 10 states with the highest housing scores, meaning that homeownership there is the most attainable—and affordable—in the country:
The states with the lower housing access scores, on the other hand, are mostly in the West and East coasts, with some significant exceptions:
The Midwest is so affordable compared to the rest of the country due to low demand, according to Chen Zhao, Redfin’s head of economic research.
"Fewer people want to live there due to limited job opportunities, which makes those places more affordable," she told Newsweek .
Because of its relative low popularity among Americans, the Midwest did not see the same rise in home prices experienced by markets in the South—like Florida and Texas—during the pandemic, when the rise of remote work unleashed a home-buying frenzy in these states.
As a result, home prices, already lower than in much of the country, stayed relatively affordable through the crazy hikes experienced across the country since 2019.
That does not mean they have not been climbing rapidly in these markets as well; but they started from a much lower base than those on the coasts. In June 2026, median sale prices in states such as Iowa ($269,058), Indiana ($288,896), Kansas ($304,048) and Ohio ($279,126) remained well below the levels seen in many parts of the Northeast and West, where prices commonly exceeded $400,000 and, in some states, topped $700,000, according to Redfin data.
FHFA state-level data show that home prices rose about 51 percent nationally from 2019 to 2025, with the Northeast seeing the sharpest increase, at nearly 66 percent. But in places like Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and Ohio, home prices remain much lower relative to local incomes than in California, New York or Massachusetts.
That makes all the difference for homebuyers: Midwestern incomes are not necessarily higher than in the rest of the country—especially if compared with California or New York—but homes are often dramatically cheaper. That means buyers need a smaller down payment and have to spend a smaller share of their income on housing.
There is also another factor to consider: home building.
The coastal West and the Northeast have such high home prices due to their continued popularity among buyers and scarce inventory, "driven in large part by decades of underbuilding relative to job and population growth," Hannah Jones, senior economist at Realtor.com, told Newsweek .
"These regions are anchored by dense, high-wage economic hubs—tech in the Bay Area, finance in New York and Boston, government and tech in D.C.—that draw a steady stream of high earners. That demand bids up prices across the board, including for renters and lower-income buyers competing for the same limited stock," she added.
Many Midwestern metros face fewer geographic constraints than coastal regions. Unlike cities like San Francisco, New York City, and Honolulu, most Midwestern markets can expand outward more easily when demand rises.
Western and Northeastern states generally face stricter zoning and land-use constraints than in the Midwest or the South, and that is why the housing shortage is most acute in these regions.
While the South and West beat the Midwest—and the Northeast—in terms of building permits and availability of new homes for sale, lower demand in the Midwest contributes to a more balanced market, where prices are neither skyrocketing nor plunging.
That relative affordability has made the Midwest one of the last areas where many households can still buy a home without confronting the six-figure price premiums that have become common elsewhere—but that does not mean that is where Americans want to buy a home.
While existing home sales were down 2.4 percent month-over-month in June nationwide, they actually rose 2.8 percent year-over-year, according to the latest data by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) ; they were unchanged in the Northeast—compared to +2.1 percent in the Midwest, +3.8 percent in the South, and +2.8 percent in the West.
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