Housing Affordability Slightly Improves in SoCal
- The California Association of Realtors said Friday that housing affordability improved slightly in 2025, but Southern California still posted some of the state’s weakest homebuying numbers, with Orange, Los Angeles and San Diego lagging. - In 2025, just 19% of Californians could afford the state’s median-priced detached home at $875,550, while Orange County required $356,800 in annual income and left only 13% of households able to buy. - Riverside and San Bernardino remained relative outliers in Southern California, underscoring how mortgage-rate relief has helped inland markets more than coastal ones. (car.org)
Housing affordability in Southern California improved slightly in 2025, but the region remained among California’s hardest places to buy a home. (car.org 1) (car.org 2) The California Association of Realtors said 19% of Californians earned enough in 2025 to buy the state’s median-priced detached home, up from 18% in 2024. That home cost $875,550, and the minimum qualifying income was $221,200 at a 6.71% mortgage rate. (car.org) Southern California’s county numbers were lower in the big coastal markets. Los Angeles County registered 14% affordability on a $906,030 median home, Orange County 13% on a $1.397 million median home, and San Diego County 15% on a $1.000 million median home. (car.org) The inland counties looked different. Riverside County came in at 25% affordability with a $628,470 median home, while San Bernardino County reached 35% with a $485,000 median home. (car.org) The ethnic gaps stayed wide even as statewide affordability ticked up. In 2025, 29% of Asian households and 23% of white non-Hispanic households could afford a median-priced California home, compared with 11% of Black households and 11% of Hispanic or Latino households. (car.org) In Los Angeles County, 21% of white households and 18% of Asian households could afford the median-priced home in 2025, versus 8% of Hispanic or Latino households and 7% of Black households. In Orange County, Hispanic or Latino affordability was 7%, while Black affordability was 13%. (car.org) The statewide Black affordability gap widened to 8.7 percentage points in 2025 from a revised 8.3 points in 2024, while the Hispanic or Latino gap narrowed to 7.9 points from 8.2 points. The Realtors group said wage inequities and barriers to credit access continued to weigh on buyers. (prnewswire.com) Quarterly data showed the late-2025 improvement was tied partly to lower borrowing costs. In the fourth quarter of 2025, 18% of California households could afford the median-priced home, up from 17% in the third quarter and 16% a year earlier, as the effective mortgage rate fell to 6.35%. (car.org) C.A.R. said additional rate relief was expected later in 2026, but it also said home prices were likely to edge up over the next 12 months. That leaves Southern California with a familiar split: modest improvement on paper, and ownership still out of reach for most households. (car.org 1) (car.org 2)
