The economy matters in an election year. And while our economy is fine on paper, it might not feel that way to anyone who wants to buy a home in this post-pandemic era. How that’ll affect President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump is still to be determined, but they may want to pay particular attention to swing states.
“Voters in swing states care about housing affordability because soaring home prices and mortgage rates, along with a shortage of homes for sale, have made homeownership feel impossible for some Americans,” Redfin’s senior economist Elijah de la Campa said in an analysis published Tuesday. “That’s especially true for young people who are earning low incomes and haven’t yet built up their savings, making them feel it would be an uphill battle to reach their parents’ level of financial success.”
He continued: “While swing states have historically had lower housing costs than blue states—and most still do—markets in swing states have not been immune to the affordability crunch the country has been facing for the last several years. The inability to afford a home is making a lot of voters feel bad about the economy and their financial prospects.”
Typical monthly housing payments in swing states have almost doubled in four years: The median monthly payment rose 92% to an all-time high of more than $2,000 since the last presidential election, with the same presidential candidates, thanks to high home prices and high mortgage rates, according to Redfin. (The analysis sees this year’s swing states as Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina; and its calculation of median monthly housing payments uses median sale price, average mortgage rate, and 15% down payment.)
In swing states, the median home sale price rose close to 40% since 2020, and is more than $316,000. Meanwhile, mortgage rates soared: The average 30-year fixed daily mortgage rate is 6.84%, which is actually considerably lower than a recent peak reached in October last year.
“The steep increase in prices and mortgage rates has made the median-priced home unaffordable to the typical swing-state resident, using the rule of thumb that a household should spend no more than 30% of their income on monthly housing costs,” the analysis read.
The median income in a swing state, per Redfin, is more than $79,000, so they’d have to spend close to 33% of their earnings to afford a typical home. Four years ago, they’d only have to spend a little under 22% of their income. Therefore, “a swing-state family,” as Redfin put it, has to earn over $86,000 to afford a median-priced home to keep them under that cost-burdened threshold; by contrast, just four years ago, they needed to make a little north of $45,000. “To look at affordability another way, just over one-third of all homes listed for sale in swing states so far this year were affordable to a household earning the median income, down from two-thirds in 2020,” the analysis said.
And of course it’s not just swing states. “Housing costs have also skyrocketed in red and blue states since 2020,” Redfin said. In red states, median housing payments have risen 95% to more than $2,000, and in blue states, they’ve risen 83% to over $3,000—both records. Not to mention, a median-earning household in a red state would spend roughly 33% of their income on a typical home, and those in blue states would spend more than 41%.
It really comes down to the pandemic and its corresponding housing boom. Home prices went up much faster than incomes, and then mortgage rates soared on the back of the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes in an attempt to tame inflation. All the while, we’re missing millions of homes.
And apparently, this has all happened before, or at least some version of it. “This isn’t the first time housing affordability has been an issue in a faceoff between Biden and Trump,” Redfin said. “Home prices had already soared in advance of the 2020 presidential election, partly because the pandemic housing boom had already begun.”
Here’s the thing: Home prices are at all-time highs, and it’s not good for anyone who wants to buy a home. But for anyone who already owns a home, it’s remarkable—they’ve seen their home values soar. So you’ve got young voters who say their top concern is affording a place to live, but maybe not so much among older generations. And then there’s the idea that homeowners are red and renters are blue, and some research suggests homeowners are more likely to vote than renters. But there is one study that found swing counties where home prices increased considerably in the four years leading up to an election were more likely to vote for an incumbent candidate.
These are all simply indications of how someone, or places, will vote. But what we know is, as of 2022, there were already almost 20 million cost-burdened homeowners and more than 22 million cost-burdened renters.