I've often written about how real estate prices have affected members of my own family. Of our four kids, two live in Colorado and can only afford to live in a nice, peaceful town well outside the troubled Denver area because they combine not two but three incomes. Our other two live in deep-red Iowa, in the same small town, where they are easily able to afford nice homes. 

They have a lot of company. Realtor.com has just released its latest Affordability and Homebuilding report cards, and I should note that, while Colorado comes in at #27 with a grade of C in the report, Iowa is in third place for affordability with an A-. Colorado has a median listing price of $599,104 and a median household income of $90,555; Iowa has a median listing price of $294,600 and a median household income of $73,122.

A look at all the rankings is revealing. The three states with A ratings are red states: South Carolina, Iowa, and Texas. The next five in the ranking are Indiana, North Carolina, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Arkansas.

Seven states come in with an F listing: Oregon, Connecticut, California, Hawaii, New York, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. Notice anything those states have in common?

Now, while Hawaii is a deep-blue state, one can see how it would be an expensive place to live regardless; it's an island into which everything has to be shipped, making everything more expensive. We have something of the same problem here in Alaska, which comes in at #43 with a C-. Stuff does cost more in the Great Land.

But the only reason the other states have? Overbearing liberal state governments.

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 Here's how the people of Realtor.com - headquartered in Texas - figure the scores:

It has become harder and harder to become a homeowner, with high prices and mortgage rates remaining the unfortunate reality, and increasing the supply of homes is the clear solution. States have a clear mandate to address housing affordability, so we are assigning grades based on how they are doing now and how well they are addressing the future by building affordable homes. Our score is a weighted average of percentile ranks across two affordability metrics and two new construction metrics:

• REALTORS® Affordability Score: 25%
• Median earner’s share of income spent on median-priced listing (ranked low to high): 25%
• Permit-to-population ratio: 40%
• New-construction premium (ranked low to high): 10%

Supply and demand, as always, apply. Many of our (Democrat-controlled) urban areas and even states have onerous building codes and zoning systems. In some places the permitting process for even starting a new build is shocking; a few years back, I was working in Silicon Valley, and an engineer at the client company was describing me how it could take three to five years even to get clearance to break ground where he lived, in San Jose.

Apparently, knowing the way to San Jose isn't enough. You have to know the way through a labyrinth of permits and reports.

Needless to say, all this has a bad effect on housing prices; restrict supply, prices go up. This is Economics 101. The lesson is clear: If it's home ownership you crave, you'll get a lot more bang for your real-estate buck in a red state.

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