Philadelphia ranked 21st for affordable housing in the U.S., and sixth out of larger cities, according to WalletHub.
Philadelphia recently ranked 21st in WalletHub's “Most Affordable Cities to Buy a Home” survey, but that doesn’t explain why affordable housing remains a significant issue for Philly residents.
Over half of Philadelphians are cost-burdened, meaning they spend over 30% of their income on housing. For city residents, the 2024 median income was about $57,000, excluding suburbs.
Advocates for affordable housing, including Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, have been pushing for several initiatives, including the Housing Opportunities Made Easy plan, which recently passed on June 6.
During the last city council meeting, Parker proposed a $6.8 billion budget, with a request for $800 million in borrowing authority to fund HOME. The goal of the project is to produce, preserve and stabilize 30,000 housing units in Philadelphia.
If there is such high support of this bill, then it seems strange that Philadelphia is supposedly the 21st most affordable city to buy a home.
The survey also ranked how affordable cities were in terms of size, separating cities into three categories: small, medium and large. Philadelphia ranked as the sixth most affordable “large city,” falling between Cleveland and Baltimore.
New buyers may find more affordable housing in Philadelphia, but prices still aren’t cheap.
According to WalletHub, the median price of houses increased by more than $100,000 between 2019 and 2025.
Interest rates have also skyrocketed. In January 2021, the average rate for a 30-year home loan was just 2.65%. By May 2025, it had jumped to 6.81%, making it much more expensive to borrow money to buy a house.
Local Realtor Clarey Small, from The Rosenthal Group, agreed that rising housing prices aren’t exclusive to Philadelphia.
Small said it’s possible Philadelphia, while still not inexpensive, may be more affordable than other cities, following a national trend of inflated prices.
“I think that people are struggling with the prices of things unrelated to housing,” Small said. “So when you look at grocery prices, those things are taking away from what people are willing to spend on a house.
Small said that while Philadelphia may be more affordable than other cities, a lot of her clients are still wary of buying a new home in the current market.
Relator Jamie Kerezsi from The Kerezsi Real Estate Team pointed to the national housing shortage. The U.S. is nearly four million houses short of its population, as of April 2024.
“We're definitely in a housing crisis, and interest rates on top of that really make things difficult,” Kerezsi said.
As a past resident of both New York and California, Kerezsi said that Philadelphia is more affordable than those cities. Compared to Philly suburbs, Philadelphia is also more accessible, she said.
Kerezi also pointed to several government-funded opportunities, including grants and percent buyer programs, that make housing more available for buyers, many of which she uses to help her clients.
Small also said she’s used several of Philadelphia’s housing affordability programs to help her client. She agreed that may have contributed to Philadelphia’s housing affordability rating.
WalletHub uses 10 key metrics for their rankings, including housing affordability, cost of homeowners insurance, maintenance affordability, quarterly active listings and rent-to-price ratio, among others.
To calculate housing affordability, the median house price is divided by the median annual household income.
