How Many Years It Takes to Save a Down Payment, by Metro
July 12, 2026 · Analysis
A household in St. Louis hits a 20% down payment in about 14 years. A household in Los Angeles needs 40. Same savings discipline, same share of income set aside, three times the wait. That gap is the actual story behind "housing is unaffordable," a headline flat enough to hide a twenty-five-city range underneath it.
We built this by combining two real datasets: Sialim's own May 2026 median home values for 894 US metros, and the Census Bureau's 2024 American Community Survey median household income figures for the 25 largest metros. Nothing here is copied from another publisher's table. Every number traces to one of those two sources and the arithmetic below.
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The method, in full
Down payment target: 20% of the metro's median home value, the threshold that avoids private mortgage insurance. Annual savings: 5% of median household income, a mid-range assumption between the 3-4% personal savings rate the Bureau of Economic Analysis has reported through 2026 and the more aggressive 10% a motivated buyer might sustain. Years to save: down payment divided by annual savings, with no investment growth on the balance and no home price appreciation during the saving period. Both omissions push the numbers in opposite directions and roughly cancel: real-world returns shorten the timeline, real-world price growth lengthens it.
Change the savings rate and every number moves together, but the ranking barely shifts. Double it to 10% and St. Louis drops to about 7 years, Los Angeles to about 20. The metros stay in the same order because the underlying driver isn't the savings assumption. It's the ratio between home prices and incomes, and that ratio is set locally.
The full table
| Metro | Median home value | Median household income | 20% down payment | Years to save |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| St. Louis, MO | $276,878 | $81,679 | $55,376 | 13.6 |
| Detroit, MI | $269,080 | $76,403 | $53,816 | 14.1 |
| San Antonio, TX | $280,297 | $78,112 | $56,059 | 14.4 |
| Houston, TX | $308,306 | $81,417 | $61,661 | 15.1 |
| Chicago, IL | $353,998 | $90,770 | $70,800 | 15.6 |
| Dallas, TX | $366,823 | $92,733 | $73,365 | 15.8 |
| Minneapolis, MN | $393,774 | $97,928 | $78,755 | 16.1 |
| Baltimore, MD | $405,877 | $98,666 | $81,175 | 16.5 |
| Atlanta, GA | $382,938 | $92,344 | $76,588 | 16.6 |
| Philadelphia, PA | $390,463 | $90,850 | $78,093 | 17.2 |
| Charlotte, NC | $390,321 | $85,938 | $78,064 | 18.2 |
| Tampa, FL | $360,738 | $78,275 | $72,148 | 18.4 |
| Washington, DC | $583,013 | $126,244 | $116,603 | 18.5 |
| Orlando, FL | $387,733 | $81,044 | $77,547 | 19.1 |
| Phoenix, AZ | $448,352 | $90,133 | $89,670 | 19.9 |
| Denver, CO | $573,221 | $108,046 | $114,644 | 21.2 |
| Portland, OR | $552,022 | $98,994 | $110,404 | 22.3 |
| Miami, FL | $475,622 | $80,625 | $95,124 | 23.6 |
| Boston, MA | $741,868 | $117,825 | $148,374 | 25.2 |
| Riverside, CA | $585,378 | $91,013 | $117,076 | 25.7 |
| Seattle, WA | $750,279 | $112,388 | $150,056 | 26.7 |
| New York, NY | $727,625 | $99,852 | $145,525 | 29.1 |
| San Francisco, CA | $1,149,215 | $135,590 | $229,843 | 33.9 |
| San Diego, CA | $946,365 | $109,132 | $189,273 | 34.7 |
| Los Angeles, CA | $968,608 | $96,405 | $193,722 | 40.2 |
Home values: Sialim ZHVI-based dataset, May 2026. Income: Census ACS 1-year estimates, 2024. Down payment and years-to-save are Sialim calculations, not published by either source.
The Midwest gets there first
Three of the five fastest metros to a down payment sit in the Midwest and Texas corridor: St. Louis, Detroit, and San Antonio all land under 15 years. Detroit is the sharpest reminder that affordability isn't about income level. Its median household income, $76,403, is the lowest of all 25 metros in this table, yet its home value, $269,080, is low enough to still produce a 14.1-year timeline. A household there gets to a down payment faster than a household earning $20,000 more a year in Denver or Phoenix.
Chicago backs up the pattern at fifth place, 15.6 years, despite being a legacy metro nobody frames as an affordability story. Its home values sit 63% below Los Angeles, while its income, $90,770, holds up against metros twice its price level. Low prices paired with median incomes beat high incomes paired with extreme prices, every time the arithmetic gets run.
Coastal metros aren't one story either
Boston, Riverside, and Seattle cluster together in the mid-20s, between 25.2 and 26.7 years, and each gets there a different way. Boston pairs a high income, $117,825, with an even higher price. Riverside pairs a middling income, $91,013, with a price inflated by its position inside the Los Angeles commuter belt. New York comes in faster than any of the three at 29.1 years, which surprises people who assume it's the most expensive market in the country. It isn't, not by this measure. The metro's $727,625 median sits well below San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego, and its income base is broad enough to offset some of the price level.
California carries the real weight at the bottom of the table. San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angeles are the only three metros in this set above 30 years, and Los Angeles alone needs a household to save for longer than a 30-year mortgage lasts. Its income, $96,405, ranks in the middle of the full 25. Its price, $968,608, is the second-highest. That combination, not either number alone, produces the 40-year outlier.
What the forecast side adds
Static affordability tables miss where prices are headed, so this is where Sialim's own forecasting adds something the Census data can't. Our one-year Prophet-based forecasts currently point down or flat for 16 of these 25 metros. Tampa carries the steepest projected decline in the group, -4.5% over the coming year, which would shave roughly eight months off its current 18.4-year timeline if it plays out and incomes hold steady. Chicago, the metro with the strongest projected gain at 4.7%, is heading the opposite direction: a household there could see its 15.6-year timeline stretch out again as prices climb.
None of that changes the core finding. Even a metro heading for a price decline, like Phoenix at -4.4% projected, still asks a median-income household to save for two decades. Falling prices help at the margin. They don't erase a ratio this large.
Where this leaves a household planning a purchase
The metro you live in sets your timeline more than any national rate decision or news cycle will. A household in St. Louis and a household in Los Angeles can save at identical rates, on identical incomes as a share of what they earn, and land 26.6 years apart. That gap is bigger than anything the Federal Reserve controls, and bigger than what a 1% swing in mortgage rates would change.
Check your own metro's current median value and forecast against this math: find your metro. Compare it against ours: see where we diverge from Zillow's forecast.
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Sources linked inline. Home price data: Sialim, May 2026, 894 US metros. Income data: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 1-year estimates, 2024. Down payment and savings-timeline figures are original Sialim calculations built from both datasets. Analysis, not financial advice.