{"id":82052,"date":"2025-09-02T05:02:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T12:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/?p=82052"},"modified":"2025-08-29T16:20:50","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T23:20:50","slug":"bay-area-return-to-normal-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/bay-area-return-to-normal-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"San Francisco is the Only Major U.S. Metro Where Housing Costs Have Returned to \u2018Normal\u2019\u2014But That Doesn\u2019t Mean It\u2019s Affordable"},"content":{"rendered":"

San Francisco is the only major U.S. metro area where housing costs have returned to \u201cnormal\u201d\u2014and Bay Area neighbors Oakland and San Jose are not far off.<\/span><\/p>\n

Redfin today published a <\/span>report<\/span><\/a> projecting hypothetical scenarios where U.S. housing costs will return to \u201cnormal\u201d within the next ten years, using the mortgage payment-to-income ratio as the measurement.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We used July 2018 data to define \u201cnormal\u201d because it was when the national median ratio had just reached 30%\u2014a widely recognized benchmark for housing affordability. It was a moment in time well before the pandemic sent housing costs on a rollercoaster ride starting in 2020. In this analysis we compare costs using a 6.7% mortgage rate, an approximate representation of the past three months of rate activity.<\/span><\/p>\n

San Francisco housing costs are back below 2018 levels<\/b><\/h3>\n

The analysis found that San Francisco\u2019s mortgage payment-to-income ratio was 67.1% in July, seven percentage points lower than the 74.1% ratio in July 2018.<\/span><\/p>\n