iStock photo illustration

While starter homes across the nation are getting more affordable, the same can not be said for those in Greater Boston.

According to a new report from Redfin, the median starter home price in the area increased 6.5 percent year-over-year to $490,000. While far from the most expensive starter homes in California, Boston has the ninth-most expensive starter homes in the United States and third-most when excluding the California metros.

While home prices continue to increase, so does the income needed to afford these starter homes. A Greater Boston household needs to make $162,016 per year to afford a median-priced starter home. This is a 2 percent increase year-over-year.

“While many people make enough on paper to afford a starter home, they often have other expenses like student debt that are preventing them from buying,” said Blakely Minton, a Redfin Premier real estate agent in Philadelphia. “Starter-home buyers are skewing older than they used to. When I first started working in real estate 20 years ago, they were kids fresh out of college. Now grads are saddled with huge student loans and are moving back in with Mom and Dad or renting,”

On a national scale, a U.S. homebuyer needs to earn $76,995 per year to afford the median-priced starter home which is down 0.4 percent year over year, the first annual decline since August 2020. Additionally, the share of starter-home listings that are affordable to the typical household increased from 72.6 percent in August 2023 to 75.8 percent in August 2024.

Still, American starter-home prices are now 51.1 percent higher than they were in August 2019 and 163 percent higher than they were in August 2012.