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We love you, New York City—but between the sky-high rents and $20 sandwiches, it’s no secret that the cost of living here can feel, well, severely unaffordable. That’s the actual term used by the 2025 Demographia International Housing Affordability report, which just ranked metro New York as one of the priciest housing markets in the U.S.
But here’s the plot twist: A few other New York towns made the opposite end of the list.
Further upstate, Rochester and Buffalo both landed in the top 15 most affordable housing markets in the country, with Rochester coming in at No. 4 and Buffalo tied for No. 12. The study uses something called the “median multiple”—basically, the ratio of home prices to local incomes—to measure how affordable a place really is. Rochester scored a 3.6 and Buffalo a 4.0, making them moderately unaffordable but still light years ahead of New York City’s jaw-dropping 7.4 rating.
Translation: If you want to buy a house without selling your soul (or your sneaker collection), upstate might be the move.
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Other cities topping the affordability list include Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Cleveland, Ohio; and St. Louis, Missouri, while the usual suspects—San Jose and Los Angeles in California and Honolulu in Hawaii—rounded out the bottom. New York City wasn’t quite the worst, but the Big Apple certainly wasn’t far off.
The report also notes a growing trend: People are ditching big-ticket cities in favor of smaller, more affordable ones where their paychecks go further, all while giving you the conveniences of modern urbanism. So if you've ever dreamed of swapping your fifth-floor walk-up for a driveway and a backyard? You’ve got options—and they’re still in New York.