A widening gap is playing out between what homebuyers want and what’s available in today’s marketplace.
So says a detailed new report just issued by the National Association of Realtors that asserts, among other things, that would-be middle-income homebuyers can afford only 23% of the nation’s current home listings.
The report, The Housing Mismatch, says the country’s housing market “continues to face an overall supply shortage, and the existing supply is not aligned with price points buyers can afford.”
Using what the NAR calls a Listing-Income Alignment Score, which evaluates how well listings match income distribution, the report says that the current score stands at 74.9%. This is up from the summer of 2023 when the figure stood at 57%, but still down from earlier in the decade when it came in at 84.4%.
In most markets, notes the report, both lower- and middle-income potential homebuyers “face a shortage of listings within their price range, while listings at higher price points are relatively more abundant.”
“This imbalance reduces the effective supply available to buyers who typically drive transaction volume,” the report points out.
In a statement accompanying the report, Nadia Evangelou, National Association of Realtor’s director of real estate research, says the gap between what’s available and what people can afford is “preventing home sales from reaching pre-pandemic levels.”
To make up for a gap particularly impacting those who make around $75,000 annually, the country needs listings of around 311,000 homes priced under the $261,000 mark.
The report found that the distribution score is at the lowest end in most of New Mexico, northern Arizona, and western Colorado. Cities classified as having moderate shortages in the medium price range include Colorado Springs, Denver, and Tucson; while Phoenix was listed in the significant shortage category, along with Albuquerque and El Paso.
May 28, 2026
By Garry Boulard
The Housing Mismatch Report
