Home values may have skyrocketed during the pandemic, but the same can’t be said for income—at least for the masses. To find out how much home values increased relative to incomes, LendingTree analyzed U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey data, comparing both variables from 2019-2021.
It comes as no surprise that states out West saw some of the largest gains in home values relative to incomes. On average, median home values increased by 17.36 percent from 2019-2021, while median household incomes grew by an average of 6.00 percent. That’s a difference of 11.36 percentage points.
While incomes increased by more than the national average in Idaho and Arizona, home values increased by 35.73 and 20.14 percent more in each state. In Utah, home values increased by 22.83 percent more than the state’s median household income.
Home prices increased the least relative to incomes in Vermont, Iowa and Connecticut. In Iowa and Connecticut, median household incomes increased by 6.34 percent and 6.26 percent from 2019-2021, while home values increased by 9.75 percent and 10.97 percent. In Vermont, where both incomes and median home values increased by double digits (14.97 percent and 16.42 percent, respectively), the median home value increased by 1.46 percentage points more than the median household income.