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Brian McKay

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Brian is the Co-Founder of MonitorBankRates.com. For over 18 years, he has utilized his background in enterprise infrastructure to engineer proprietary systems that track rates from over 8,000 financial institutions.

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| August 25, 2026 | 8 min read

Summer 2026 Housing Affordability Report: Mortgage Rates Climbed, 50 of 51 States Less Affordable

In May, MonitorBankRates' Housing Affordability Index was just above its 100 baseline number and 30-year mortgage rates were at 6.30%. Since then rates have climbed 0.38 percentage points, the score has slipped below 100, and in every state but one, homes are less affordable than they were in the spring.

The MonitorBankRates Housing Affordability Index ended August at 99.4, down from 100.7 in early May. That is a drop of 1.3 index points over sixteen weeks, and all of it came from mortgage rates moving higher since spring. Larger swings will come when the Federal Reserve changes the fed funds rate and bond yields move more than they did this summer. Still, the score has been below 100 every day since mid-July. The only thing that changed is 30-year mortgage rates, which increased from 6.302% to 6.678%. That average is derived nightly from 10,776 verified rate quotes at 1,778 banks and credit unions, pulled directly from each institution's website.

How mortgage rates pushed the score below 100

The red line below is the national average 30-year mortgage rate, derived from the rates lenders post on their websites and computed each night. The blue line is the index score. When rates go up, the score goes down.

30-year mortgage rate vs. national affordability score, May 5 to Aug. 25, 2026

Daily values from the MonitorBankRates rate database. Dashed line marks the 100 baseline, which corresponds to a 6.5% reference rate.

Through the first three weeks of May, rates drifted up from 6.30% to about 6.40% and the score eased from 100.7 to 100.4. Then, over four days in late May, the average jumped 0.11 percentage points and the index went under 100 for the first time since it launched. Rates fell back after the June 17 Fed meeting, dropping almost a tenth of a point overnight to 6.44%, and the score recovered to 100.25. It stayed close to that level through the Fourth of July. Rates climbed again from mid-July into early August, peaking at 6.68% on August 5, and have held there since.

The Fed held its target range at 3.50% to 3.75% at both the June and July meetings, but its June projections shifted from an expected cut to a possible hike, and in July three officials dissented in favor of raising rates. The July statement pointed to supply shocks, energy in particular, for keeping inflation above target. Bond yields rose in response, lenders repriced, and each repricing showed up in the index the following morning.

What a 0.38-point rate increase costs a buyer

A rate increase of 0.38 percentage points sounds small until you see it on a mortgage payment. If you borrow $350,000, your principal and interest payment at 6.302% is about $2,167 a month. At 6.678% it is about $2,253. That is $87 more every month, a little over $1,000 a year, for the same house. Lenders generally want your mortgage payment to stay under 28% of your income, so the income you would need to qualify for that loan rose by roughly $3,700, from about $92,900 to about $96,600, before property taxes and homeowners insurance, which lenders add to the payment they use to qualify you.

The index asks how much income a typical household needs to afford the typical home in a given market at today's rates, then compares it with what households there actually earn. When rates go up, the required income goes up, the gap widens, and the score falls. The mortgage affordability calculator runs the same calculation on your own numbers, and you can plug in a quote from today's mortgage rates instead of the national average.

Which states lost the most affordability

The expensive coastal states might be expected to take the biggest hits when rates rise, since a bigger loan means more dollars of extra interest. The index shows the opposite. The largest point declines were all in the most affordable states, and the least affordable states barely moved.

Change in MBR-HAI score, May 5 to Aug. 25, 2026: biggest declines and the states that held up

Red bars are declines of 2.0 points or more. Gray bars are the states that lost the least. Green is the only state that improved.

The explanation is in how the score is built. A state's score is roughly the ratio of what households there earn to what they would need to qualify for the median home. In West Virginia or Arkansas that ratio is high, around 1.4 to 1.5, so a given percentage increase in required income takes a bigger bite in index points. In California the ratio starts below 0.7, so the same percentage move is worth fewer points. Every state was hit by about the same proportion. The affordable ones had more points to lose.

Rates also did not rise evenly across the country. The average state 30-year rate climbed 0.37 percentage points, but the average in Arkansas rose 0.64 points, Oklahoma 0.61, Missouri 0.57 and Louisiana 0.50. All four are among the eight largest score declines. Oklahoma now has the highest average 30-year mortgage rate of any state at 6.91%, up from 6.30% in May, which is why it lost its Highly Affordable rating even though its home prices and incomes did not change.

Five biggest declines

Three states dropped a rating

Oklahoma went from 121.7 to 119.0 and is now rated More Affordable Than Average instead of Highly Affordable. It is still the tenth most affordable state, but its 6.91% average 30-year mortgage rate is the highest of any state. Nebraska slid from 110.6 to 109.0 and is now Near National Average. Connecticut went from 90.8 to 89.4, which moved it from Near National Average to Moderately Less Affordable. None of these were big moves. Each state was within two points of a rating cutoff in May, and higher average mortgage rates in each state over the summer were enough to push it across.

Maine went the other way

Maine rose 1.0 point, from 96.8 to 97.8, and was the only state to become more affordable this summer. Its home prices did not fall. In May, Maine had the highest average 30-year mortgage rate in the country at 6.75%. Over the summer that average came down to 6.46%, now the lowest of any state, as lenders there caught up with rate cuts the rest of the country had already made in the spring and the mix of institutions posting rates shifted. State averages come from the banks and credit unions that actually publish rates in each state, and a smaller group of lenders can move on its own schedule. Whether a state's score went up or down this summer came down to one thing: whether average mortgage rates in that state moved higher or lower.

The rankings barely changed. The scores did.

Because every state fell by a similar proportion, the order of the list looks almost the same as it did in May. West Virginia is still first at 147.8. Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi and Iowa still round out the top five. California is still last at 68.6, with Hawaii, Massachusetts, the District of Columbia and Oregon above it in the same order as before. A few states swapped places in the middle. Ohio slipped from 13th to 15th behind South Carolina and New Mexico, Wisconsin and North Carolina traded 21st and 22nd, and Virginia dropped behind Maine. The gap between first and last narrowed slightly, from 80.4 points to 79.2.

One count did change. In May, 29 states scored at or above 100, meaning they were at least as affordable as the national baseline. Now it is 28. Minnesota crossed the line, going from 101.1 to 99.4. If the 30-year average rises another 0.30 to 0.40 points from here, Texas and Alaska, both sitting around 101, would be next.

MBR-HAI score by state, August 25, 2026

Scores as of August 25, 2026. National baseline = 100; higher is more affordable. Hover a state for its May-to-August change; click for its live daily score.

Source: MonitorBankRates (MBR) Housing Affordability Index, MonitorBankRates.com. A live, self-updating version of this map is available to embed from the index hub.

What to watch this fall

The September 16 Fed meeting. The July vote was 9 to 3, with the three dissenters wanting a rate hike. If that view wins in September, or the projections move further in that direction, the 30-year average is more likely to test 6.75% than to fall back toward 6.50%. Each additional quarter point takes roughly another point off the national score and would put two or three more states under 100.

The three-week plateau. Rates have moved only about a hundredth of a percentage point in either direction since August 5. Stalls like this usually end on an economic report, and the August jobs and inflation numbers both come out before the Fed meets. Whichever way rates break, the index will show it the next morning.

December. That is when the eight Census components update with new American Community Survey estimates. Home values and incomes will both move, and in most states home values will move more. That update will do more to the rankings than any rate change this fall.

For anyone buying now, the spread between the highest and lowest 30-year quotes on any given day is still more than a full percentage point. The national average went up 0.38 points this summer. A buyer who shops five lenders instead of one can usually find more than that. Current 30-year quotes are on the 30-year mortgage rates page, every other loan type is on the mortgage rates page, and the daily national and state averages are on the mortgage rate trends page. Both are built from the same data as this report.

About the MBR Housing Affordability Index

The MBR-HAI combines nine components. One is a qualifying-income calculation using the live 30-year mortgage rate from the MonitorBankRates lender database. The other eight come from the Census Bureau: median home value, median household income, the price-to-income ratio, conforming loan limit access, median monthly owner costs, property tax burden, homeownership and vacancy rates, and owner and renter cost-burden shares. A score of 100 equals the national baseline at a 6.5% reference rate. The rate component updates every morning; the Census components update each December. The full formula is on the methodology page.

The index is free for editorial, academic and policy use. Cite it as “MonitorBankRates (MBR) Housing Affordability Index, MonitorBankRates.com” and link to the methodology page. Daily national and state history is available as CSV downloads from the live index page. The numbers in this report are as of August 25, 2026 and will not change; the live page updates every morning.