Miami Area Has Shortage of Affordable Home Listings. Who Is Left Out
The Miami metro area has a significant shortage of affordable listings for many people looking to buy homes.
That’s according to this year’s Housing Mismatch Report, released in May and produced as a collaborative effort between Realtor.com and the National Association of Realtors.
Miami Has a Serious Housing Mismatch
The report tracks “listing-income alignment” scores, which show how well the current distribution of home listings matches the distribution of household incomes in a given market. In other words, if households at every income level tried to buy a home today, would they find listings proportional to their share of the local population?
A score of 100% means listings are well-distributed across all income tiers. A score of 75% means households have access to about 75% of what a balanced market would offer them.
The Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metro area had a significant shortage of affordable housing for all incomes in March 2026, according to the report, with a score of 67%. That’s an improvement over the area’s score of 64.1% in March 2019.
Significant shortages are common in fast-growing Sun Belt metros, according to the report.
Nationally, middle-income households faced the largest supply gap. Buyers earning about $75,000 can afford homes priced up to about $261,140, according to the report, but homes priced below that point accounted for only about 23% of national listings. In a balanced market, 44% would be priced below that point.
Miami’s Cost of Living Tops New York’s
The Miami area’s cost of living surpassed New York’s, according to the most recent regional price comparison data available from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
The data, which analyzes 2024 conditions, compares differences in price levels across states and metropolitan areas. Both regions had price levels above the national average, but the Miami area was more expensive overall.
Regional price parities, which the data uses to compare area price levels, have a national average of 100. If an area’s RPP is 120, for instance, its price levels are 20% higher than the U.S. average.
The Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metropolitan statistical area had an all-items RPP of 114.155 — a value that includes all consumption goods and services, including housing rents. The New York-Newark-Jersey City metropolitan statistical area, by contrast, had a lower all-items RPP value of 112.563.
More Miami-Dade Households Struggle to Make Ends Meet
During the same year, thousands of Miami-Dade households were unable to make ends meet, according to data provided by United Way.
According to the 2026 State of ALICE in Florida report, which analyzes data from 2024, 155,328 households in Miami-Dade County were considered to be in poverty, up from 145,803 in 2023. Additionally, 408,619 households met the requirements for ALICE, an increase from 381,666 the year before. The acronym stands for “Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed” and refers to households that earn more than the federal poverty level but less than the basic cost of living for the county.
Forty-one percent of households in Miami-Dade County were ALICE households, compared with the state average of 34%. Fifteen percent were in poverty, compared with the state average of 12%.
Within the county, there was also significant variation among ZIP codes. For instance, the percentage of households below the ALICE threshold — including ALICE households and those in poverty — ranged from 83% in ZIP codes 33142, which serves parts of Brownsville, and 33128, which encompasses parts of Downtown, to 15% in ZIP code 33158, which serves parts of Deering Bay.
Sarah Perkel is a South Florida Connect Reporter for the USA TODAY Network’s Florida Connect team.
