New York's median home listing price is $668,173. The median household income there is $82,657. Realtor.com ran the numbers, handed out grades, and New York got an F. California got an F too, which is the rare occasion where both coasts are equally screwed.
Indiana Is Top of the Class and Nobody Saw That Coming
The New York Post covered the release of Realtor.com's 2026 Housing Report Cards this week, and the headline finding is exactly as humbling as it sounds for anyone who spent the last decade convinced that proximity to a coastline was an asset. Indiana topped the entire country with a score of 76.3 out of 100, earning a straight A. The Hoosier State's median home price sits at $295,810. The median household income is $71,469. That works out to about 28% of income going toward housing, which slides just under the 30% affordability threshold that economists treat as the danger zone.
Think about that for a second. You can buy a median home in Indiana and not immediately be financially obliterated. That used to be the baseline expectation of owning property in America. Now it's a distinction worth a national ranking.
Iowa took the second A grade with a median listing price of $282,886 and a median household income of $75,991. South Carolina, last year's top state, slipped to third but held its A, with a median listing price of $363,896. Texas came in fourth with an A- at $364,749 median. These are not flashy numbers. That's the whole point.
The F Students Are Exactly Who You Think They Are
Six states failed outright. New York landed dead last in the entire country. The $668,173 median listing price against an $82,657 median income is the kind of ratio that makes financial advisors wince and twenty-somethings move to Columbus. The other F-grade states were Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Hawaii, California, and Connecticut, in order from worst to slightly less catastrophic.
The report attributes the chronic underperformance at the bottom to a familiar cluster of problems: high existing prices, limited land available for development, restrictive zoning policies that make building anything affordable practically illegal, and construction costs that have outpaced what middle-income buyers can actually pay. None of this is new. None of it is a surprise. These states have been failing this test for years and they are not trying particularly hard to pass it.
Hawaii getting an F feels almost too on the nose. Yes, it's paradise. Yes, it's also an island with limited land and a tourism-warped economy where working locals have been priced out of the housing market for a generation. The scenery does not offset a failing grade.
The Grading System and What It Actually Measures
Realtor.com built the scoring on two equal halves: affordability and homebuilding activity. The affordability component looks at what share of median household income goes toward a median-priced home. The homebuilding component measures how much new housing construction is happening relative to the existing stock and population. It is a pretty sensible rubric. A state can have relatively cheap homes but no new construction and still score poorly. A state can be building aggressively but if the prices stay out of reach, that counts against it too.
Realtor.com senior economist Joel Berner noted in the report's release, as the Post covered, that the 2026 edition shows "a familiar regional divide, but also some notable shifts beneath the surface, with a new state at the top of the class and a handful of states whose grades moved dramatically in either direction." The regional divide he's referring to is straightforward: 12 of the 13 highest-graded states are in the Midwest or South. The 13th is Delaware, which we'll get to.
Delaware Did Something Right and Nobody Is Sure What
The most surprising movement in this year's report was Delaware jumping 12 spots, rising from 19th to 7th, landing a B grade. Utah also jumped 12 spots, going from 29th to 17th. The report doesn't spell out exactly what drove those gains, but both states are seeing increased construction activity relative to their size, and Delaware in particular has been benefiting from spillover pressure from the Philadelphia and DC metro markets pushing buyers into more affordable neighboring territory.
On the other end, Alabama fell eight spots from 13th to 21st, which is a notable drop for a state that had been a reliable performer in prior editions. Maryland dropped eight spots too, from 23rd to 31st, which tracks with the brutal DC-area market bleeding into the suburbs. New Jersey fell eight spots as well, from 35th to 43rd, earning a D. New Jersey, for context, has a $668,000 neighbor to its north and a $700,000-plus market to its south in parts of the Philadelphia suburbs. Being squeezed between New York City and those price pressures will do that.
The Full Report Card, Because You Deserve to Feel Something
The complete state-by-state grades from Realtor.com's report, as listed by the Post, run the full alphabet of outcomes. Indiana and Iowa both earned A grades. South Carolina and Texas came in at A and A- respectively. North Carolina and Nebraska got B+ grades. Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and West Virginia all received B grades.
On the lower end, Oregon earned a D-, which is the only grade worse than an F in the moral sense because at least an F is a clean failure. A D- means you tried and still almost failed. Montana got a D. New Hampshire, Vermont, and the District of Columbia each got D+ grades. The full list is in the Post's coverage and it is worth scrolling through, if only to confirm your suspicions about wherever you currently live.
The Dingo Take
Here's the thing about this report. It's not really about Indiana being great. Indiana is fine. Indiana has affordable homes and reasonable incomes and apparently a functioning housing market. Good for Indiana. The story is that "functions like a housing market" is now a competitive advantage. We have reached a point in American economic life where the bar for a top grade is "you can buy a house without spending more than 30% of your income" and most of the country cannot clear it.
The states at the bottom of this list are not failing by accident. They have made deliberate policy choices, sustained over decades, that prioritize existing homeowners over new buyers, that treat restrictive zoning as a community feature rather than a market failure, and that have watched housing costs compound into absurdity while doing roughly nothing about it. New York did not end up with a $668,000 median listing price because of bad luck. It got there because the people who own property in New York like it that way and have the political power to keep it that way.
The Midwest and South dominating this report will get used as a culture war talking point by people who want to turn housing economics into a red-state victory lap. Resist that framing. Texas has affordability problems in its major metros. Florida's insurance market is actively destroying the value of newly purchased homes. The Midwest's advantage is largely structural, built on lower land costs and less accumulated dysfunction, not superior governance. The real lesson is that housing policy is a choice, and most of the places where working people cannot afford to live have chosen, repeatedly and deliberately, to keep it that way.
