Housing cost burden measures the portion of a household’s income that goes to housing costs, including mortgage or rent, taxes, insurance, and utilities. Households spending more than 30% of income on housing are considered cost burdened.
Monthly housing costs / monthly household income × 100
Under 30% is generally considered affordable, 30–50% is cost burdened, and above 50% is severely cost burdened. Widespread cost burden signals financial stress in a community and can constrain future demand, since stretched households have less capacity to absorb price increases.
See housing cost burden for any state, metro, county, or ZIP code in the Reatlas Market Explorer.
Explore the dataSource: Reatlas analysis of U.S. Census American Community Survey (ACS), Realtor.com, and Zillow market data.