Here’s how much you need to buy a typical home in Arizona

Over the past five years, homeownership has increasingly felt out of reach for the average Arizona household. According to a new study, Arizonans must make a six-figure-a-year salary to afford a typical home in the state.

Homebuyers in Arizona must earn a household income of more than $122,000 a year to afford a median-priced home in the Grand Canyon State. The median home sale price in January of this year was $472,500, for which a homebuyer could expect to pay a monthly mortgage payment of $2,495.

The required household income to afford such a home in Arizona is nearly 5% higher than the national average, according to Bankrate’s 2025 Housing Affordability Study. It’s also an increase of more than 70% compared to January 2020, when the annual household income needed to afford a median-priced home in Arizona was roughly $72,000. That also outpaces the national average — nationwide, the household income required for such a home purchase has jumped only 50% in the last five years.

“Between elevated mortgage rates and the rise of home prices nationally to a record level, many aspiring homebuyers feel like owning a home is out of reach,” wrote Bankrate senior economic analyst Mark Hamrick in the study.

This map shows the annual household income required to afford a median-priced home in each state:


The District of Columbia ($240,000), Hawaii ($236,000) and California ($213,000) require the highest annual household incomes to afford a median-priced home. West Virginia ($64,000) is the most affordable state in the country.

To reach its conclusions, Bankrate estimated monthly mortgage payments using median home sale price data from Redfin plus homeowners insurance and property tax data from Quadrant and ATTOM, respectively. Bankrate also assumed buyers would make a 20% down payment when making its calculations.

To explain the nationwide increase, Bankrate noted that wages have risen just 4% since 2020 while home prices have spiked 20%. Higher mortgage rates — which were kept low throughout the COVID-19 pandemic — have also contributed to the problem. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate in 2020 of 3.6% has nearly doubled now, to 7.1%.

New data suggests that the housing market could be cooling off, at least in some parts of Maricopa County, making a home purchase a bit more realistic for some residents. But as Bankrate’s numbers show, the market will need to chill a lot more for things to be as buyer-friendly as they were five years ago.