Housing Prices Are Up—But Is Homeownership Really Affordable?
By Elliott Singer & Evan Kemp
Housing prices are everywhere right now: headlines, dinner conversations, and group texts where someone inevitably says, “I should’ve bought five years ago.” It’s noisy, emotional, and often confusing. Beneath all that chatter is a simpler question most buyers are really trying to answer: can I afford a home that makes sense for my life today?
Answering that means stepping away from catchy rules of thumb and feel-good sayings about real estate always going up. It means looking at real data, long-term trends, and an often-overlooked truth: affordability isn’t about the sticker price. It’s about what your monthly budget can actually handle.
Start With the Facts
So what do we do at DLAK? We look at the facts.
Housing prices are at all-time highs. In Dayton, homes selling for $600,000 today were closer to $300,000 just 15 years ago. In Cincinnati, houses now selling for $350,000 were selling for roughly $122,000 only ten years ago. Those numbers feel shocking—and they should.
The Long-Term Trend Isn’t Smooth
Most people see long-term appreciation charts and assume the trend will continue indefinitely. But when you dig into the data, the path isn’t smooth. It’s lumpy. Long-term averages hide periods of rapid growth followed by stretches of stagnation.
For example, from March 1999 to March 2017, Ohio housing prices appreciated at an average annual rate of 1.23%. Over that same period, inflation averaged 2.20%, while the S&P 500 returned about 5.92% annually. Housing didn’t just underperform stocks—it didn’t even keep up with the pace of inflation.
The Recent Surge Changed Expectations
Then came the recent surge. From March 2017 to March 2025, Ohio housing prices averaged 8.53% annual growth. Inflation averaged 3.62%, and the S&P 500 returned about 13.27% annually. That’s a massive shift—and one that understandably reshaped expectations.
*Inflation measured as CPI from St. Louis Fed, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL
Housing info from https://www.macrotrends.net/3786/ohio-home-price-index
What the Numbers Actually Tell Us
So what does all of this mean?
While my crystal ball is still on layaway at Amazon, one thing is clear: housing prices won’t keep rising at 8.53% per year forever. At some point, there will be a reversion to the mean. That could happen through declining prices—or through long periods where prices simply move sideways while incomes and inflation catch up.
Why Affordability Is About Cash Flow
This is where affordability gets misunderstood. Affordability isn’t about price. It’s about cash flow. A house that “works on paper” but strains your monthly budget isn’t an investment—it’s a liability. Real financial plans are built to survive flat prices, higher inflation, and slower growth at the same time.
Most people don’t buy homes with lump sums of cash. They buy them with monthly payments. That makes the ongoing cost far more important than the headline price. Unfortunately, there’s no good news hiding here. Home insurance and real estate taxes have also risen sharply in recent years, adding even more pressure to monthly expenses.
The Takeaway
Every variable—prices, rates, taxes, insurance—has moved in the same direction. Together, they’ve made housing feel increasingly out of reach.
The takeaway isn’t to predict where housing goes next. You don’t need to. If your budget works today—under conservative assumptions—you’re building real financial security. If it doesn’t, no amount of price appreciation will fix that problem.