Steve Eckhardt's Tampa Area Blog

According a quarterly report from the National Association of Home Builders and Wells Fargo, the typical American family, who makes the nation's median income of $64,000 a year, could afford to buy 70.8% of all homes sold in the United States during the last three months of 2009.   That's off just a tad from the record 72.5% reached during the first three months of 2009, but up substantially from the second quarter of 2008 when only 55% of homes sold were affordable.  "Favorable mortgage rates and sliding house prices that have now started to stabilize nationally have both contributed to a record year for housing affordability in 2009," said NAHB chairman Bob Jones, a home builder from Bloomfield Hills, Mich.  The NAHB judges a home to be affordable if a family making the metro area's median income could devote no more than 28% of their take-home pay toward housing costs.