Housing affordability has become a significant political and economic issue for Americans, with numerous studies highlighting high home prices, steep mortgage rates, and a shortage of available inventory.
Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based A&D Mortgage recently released a report entitled “U.S. Down Payment Affordability: Top 10 Least Accessible Cities, 2025.” The study examined down payment affordability in the 10 least accessible U.S. cities as of November 2025.
As you might expect, among the cities on the list are Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco.
The study noted that typical home values range from $534,544 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, to $1,476,547 in Kailua, Hawaii. It also noted that with the typical 15% required down payment, the years to save a down payment ranged from 28.1 to 37.1 years in those locations.
Max Slyusarchuk is the CEO of A&D Mortgage and has been in the financial industry for over 20 years. He spoke with MortgagePoint about the study and the affordability issues in general.
Q: What is the biggest factor causing such long timelines for the affordability of these cities?
Slyusarchuk: After the pandemic, different pockets of the United States experienced different rates of price increase. As you know, today the whole affordability situation for the younger generation is way more complex, and it’s much harder to buy a home than it was 30, 40, or 50 years ago, when your annual pay and home prices were much closer.
Home prices and annual pay have undergone gigantic differences. We have an internal team of analysts who do all sorts of studies throughout the United States—not just on affordability, but also on delinquency, foreclosure, and more.
These are the 10 least affordable cities, but affordability in the other cities is not the same as it was 30 to 50 years ago. For our younger generation, where is the best spot today for new families? Not sure. Reality is that buying a home and starting a family is much harder today.
Q: What can be done to bring home values and earnings more in sync?
Slyusarchuk: That is a good question. The Trump administration has said to be focused on that. The administration is supposed to be working on a rule that would prohibit institutional investors from buying and owning single-family homes. This will prevent bigger funds from buying single-family homes so there will be more inventory, which helps with affordability.
One of the big efforts is to lower the national interest rate. The interest rate today, I don’t want to say is prohibitive to homeownership, but a year and a half ago, it was prohibitive. Now it’s close to prohibitive. They need to drop the interest rate by at least another 1.5 to 2
percent to make rates more affordable.
Q: What steps should the industry take to help address these factors?
Slyusarchuk: Well, as one of the big lenders, we are working to help with all these initiatives. On the state level, we’re working with our governor in Florida to help reduce costs like insurance and excess taxes. At the national level, and on Capitol Hill, we are trying to work with Fannie Mae on one of the biggest bills we’ve sponsored. At A&D Mortgage, what we’re pushing and sponsoring with our team is to reduce the limited review time in Florida. I don’t know if you know about that issue, but Florida is the only place where limited review is up to 75% LTV; everywhere else, it’s 90%. So, we are pushing Fannie Mae to reduce that. This will help the affordability of condos in Florida, and if it helps condos in Florida, it’s going to help condos everywhere. Condos are a big part of the housing inventory and help with overall affordability because they can be cheaper than a single-family home in most cases.
Another thing we are trying to do is remove the 15-basis-point non-bank guarantee rate. When banks sell Fannie Mae bonds, Fannie Mae charges 15 basis points more to non-banks. Banks get a 15-basis-point discount, but guess what? Eighty percent of loans today are done by non-banks. This extra charge essentially goes to the borrower. The guaranteed fee is passed through. So, 15 basis points may not sound like a lot, but when you’re talking about hundreds of billions of dollars, it adds to the affordability problem.
The industry is relying on large lenders like us, Rocket, and UWM to use our power and our dollars to push regulators and the government to make housing more affordable and available.
Q: What was your biggest takeaway from this analysis? What impressed you the most?
Slyusarchuk: If you look at 40 to 50 years ago, the rate at which you had to save money for a down payment was completely different. Today, it’s so difficult for a new family to buy a home. Houses have gotten so expensive, and salaries haven’t risen nearly as much, so the gap is just too big.
Q: What is the main differentiator between the cities that are more accessible and those that are less so?
Slyusarchuk: The ranking reflects how many people want to live in these particular areas. I can tell you, it’s not that the big cities stand out so drastically while everything else is negligible. The reality is that affordability is bad everywhere, and the line is pretty smooth from the top of the list down.
There are some areas where more people don’t have to work locally, which probably influences demand. But the overall affordability situation, I’ll say, is a problem. We have to think about our homes, and we must help with affordability. This should be a main driver for action.
Q: Are there any down payment assistant programs that you know of that might help homebuyers bridge this gap?
Slyusarchuk: Absolutely. There are a lot of down payment assistance programs at the state, city, and county levels, and we participate in most of them. Today, with the power of AI, you can simply ask about these programs—‘How do I apply?’—and it will give you the exact steps you need to take.
All the big lenders participate in down payment assistance programs. We actively support as many of these programs as possible because they directly help with affordability. We are very much in favor of down payment assistance.
Q: Should people buy now, or should they continue to save for a bigger down payment?
Slyusarchuk: Well, I think the advice is ‘buy now and refinance later.’ As interest rates eventually go down, property values usually go up. Buying right now while you can get a good price makes a lot of sense.
It’s not really about the down payment. If you buy a home, you can do so with very little down. It’s about the ability to make the monthly payment—that’s the key. There are community programs that cover up to 97% financing, and you can negotiate seller concessions, so you can get in with almost no money down. The real issue is the monthly cost: the interest rate, insurance, taxes, and whether your salary can cover it all.
In our opinion, if you can get in now at the right price, do it. The market has softened over the last couple of years, which helps affordability. That makes it a smart time to buy now and refinance later when rates drop.
Q: Is there one closing thought that you would like to make that you think is important for our readers to know about the affordability problem?
Slyusarchuk: Affordability today is completely different than it was 15 years ago. It’s much harder, especially with the compensation levels we see now. This makes it significantly more difficult for the younger generation to buy a home.
Prices are so high, and what you earn buys so much less because of inflation.
