20 least affordable US cities are in California: study

KTVU staff

The top 20 most unaffordable cities to buy a home in the United States are all in California, according to a new study.

The real estate tracking agency Construction Coverage looked at cities of all sizes when coming up with its list. The report focused on the ratio of home prices to income as the basis for determining the affordability of a city.

Topping the list for least affordable was Newport Beach in Orange County where the median home price is $3.23 million and the median income is $127,353. That is a home price-to-income ratio of 25.4.

Palo Alto in Santa Clara County was second on the list. The median home in the quintessential Silicon Valley city is $3.41 million while the median income is $179,707, creating a ratio of 19.

The third least affordable city in the U.S. was Glendale in Los Angeles County. Home buyers there face a median home price of $1.17 million while residents have a median income of $77,483 for a home price-to-income ratio of 15.2.

The California cities in the top 20 of the report are:

  1. Newport Beach

  2. Palo Alto

  3. Glendale

  4. Los Angeles

  5. El Monte

  6. Costa Mesa

  7. El Cajon

  8. Inglewood

  9. Hawthorne

  10. Sunnyvale

  11. Irvine

  12. Huntington Beach

  13. Torrance

  14. Garden Grove

  15. San Jose

  16. Anaheim

  17. Long Beach

  18. East Los Angeles

  19. Carlsbad

  20. Tustin

To see the complete report, including city rankings, click here.

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