FRED data chart
What this chart shows
This chart compares three FRED series related to housing pressure: median household income, median sales price of houses sold, and the 30-year fixed mortgage rate.
Because these series are published at different frequencies, this page reads the three local CSV files from the FRED download and converts them to annual values for comparison.
Housing pressure over time
Latest comparable year
Change over full comparable period
No comparison table available yet.
Initial interpretation
This chart is designed to show whether home prices are rising faster than household income, and how mortgage rates affect the cost pressure of buying a home. A rising home-price-to-income ratio means a typical home is becoming more expensive relative to a typical household's income.
Mortgage rates matter because the same home price can produce very different monthly payments depending on the interest rate environment.
Source and method
The chart uses local CSV files downloaded from FRED and stored in data/raw/fred/. The expected files are annual.csv or fred-housing-pressure.csv for household income, quarterly.csv for home prices, and weekly_ending_thursday.csv for mortgage rates.
Quarterly home prices and weekly mortgage rates are converted into annual averages. The home-price-to-income ratio is calculated by dividing median home price by median household income for each comparable year.
| Series | FRED ID | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Median household income | MEHOINUSA646N | Annual median household income in the United States. |
| Median sales price of houses sold | MSPUS | Quarterly median sales price of houses sold in the United States. |
| 30-year fixed mortgage rate | MORTGAGE30US | Weekly average 30-year fixed mortgage rate. |