Our Housing Stability Benchmarking Scorecard covered seven distinct measures that fall under three larger umbrellas. The first umbrella is dedicated to homeownership. When Louisville, as our focal Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), was compared to its closest peers on these measures we discovered it was middle of the pack.
The first homeownership-related measure was the home-buying affordability gap, which looks at the gap between the median household income (MHI) for an MSA and its median home value through the lens of a generous (2.85)MHI affordability standard. Louisville's home-buying affordability gap is $54,131 according to this standard. This gap landed Louisville in fifth place when compared to its five closest peers. This figure is $9,406 above the peer metro mean and $7,883 above the peer metro median.
Next, we simply looked at Louisville's homeownership rate in comparison to its peers. Louisville faired much better on this metric, landing at second place on the list of six. It's 68.9 percent homeownership rate is 2.3 percentage points above the peer metro mean and 1.3 points above the median.
The final homeownership-based measure was Black homeownership equity, which calculates how much of the White homeownership rate that Black households enjoy. In a scenario of true equity, Black households would have 100 percent of the homeownership rate that White households enjoy. On this measure, Louisville landed in fourth place among its peers, with Black homeownership equity at 54.3 percent. This percentage is 0.6 points below the peer metro mean and 0.4 points below the peer metro median.
Looking at just the homeownership measures, Louisville earned a total of 7 points. This translates to a fourth-place finish among its peer metros. In the context of being benchmarked with its five closest peers, Louisville shows strength when it comes to its overall level of homeownership, but weakness when it comes to Black homeownership equity and the ability of households to financially cross the homeowner threshold.
There is so much more to the story. Get access to the datapoints behind this brief analysis and much more. A fuller picture is readily available.