New York Gets An ‘F’ For Housing Affordability And Homebuilding

If you've been struggling to stay afloat living in New York or the Hudson Valley, a new national report just confirmed what you already know, and it's not pretty.

New York Just Got An 'F' For Housing Affordability And Homebuilding

brown and white concrete house near green trees during daytime

Realtor.com's 2026 Metro Housing Report Card graded the 100 largest metro areas in the country on homebuilding activity and affordability, and the New York-Newark metro area received an F, finishing 98th out of 100, ahead of only Providence and Los Angeles on the list of worst performers.

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The median home listing price in the New York metro is $768,727, while the median household income sits at $94,960. The metro's permit-to-population ratio, which measures how many new homes are being built relative to the population, comes in at just 0.51, meaning New York is building roughly half the national average of new homes per resident.

aerial view of suburban neighborhood houses

New construction in New York also carries a 98.4% premium over existing homes, one of the largest gaps in the country, meaning new construction costs nearly double existing homes.

New York Metro Areas

Several New York Metro Areas received low grades. Including:

The New York metro area ranks near the bottom with an F grade (Total Score: 15.2) driven by high listing prices ($768,727) and severe homebuilding constraints that create acute housing affordability challenges:

The report points directly at zoning and permitting restrictions as the biggest driver separating the A-graded metros from the F-graded ones.

gray and white concrete house

The top performers, places like Des Moines, Raleigh, and Houston, tend to have more flexible zoning, faster permitting, and more available land.

New York's regulatory environment makes it one of the hardest and most expensive places in the country to build new housing, and that cost gets passed directly to buyers.

The only way out, according to the report's authors, is to build more homes. Until that happens in a meaningful way across New York, affordability isn't going anywhere.

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