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Ohio workers increasingly priced out of buying homes, with Mansfield hit hardest
The share of Ohio occupations whose workers could afford a typical home with 10% down fell from 67% in 2020 to 26% in 2025, according to a National Housing Conference report. Mansfield had the state’s sharpest decline, as the income needed to qualify for a typical home there more than doubled.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Homeownership became harder to reach for workers across Ohio between 2020 and 2025, with the state recording the country’s steepest decline in affordability, according to a new National Housing Conference report.
In Ohio, the share of occupations whose workers could afford a typically priced home with a 10% down payment dropped from 67% to 26% over the five-year period. Mansfield, Cleveland, Springfield, Toledo and Akron were among the 25 U.S. metropolitan areas with the largest affordability declines, the report found.
Mansfield experienced the sharpest decline in Ohio. A typical home there cost $115,041 in 2020, when an annual income of $28,483 was needed to qualify. By 2025, the typical price had risen to $188,863, and the qualifying income to $62,931 — a 121% increase in the income requirement.
Several occupations that could afford a typical Mansfield home in 2020 could no longer do so five years later. The report lists firefighters, postal service mail carriers, executive secretaries and loan officers among those priced out. National Housing Conference President and CEO David M. Dworkin said more than four in five occupations in Mansfield could afford a typical home in 2020, compared with fewer than one in three in 2025.
The effects reach beyond prospective buyers. In Ohio, the share of occupations able to afford a two-bedroom rental fell from 77% in 2020 to 69% in 2025. Marcus Roth, a spokesperson for the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio, said people unable to buy homes remain renters longer, adding pressure to an already constrained rental market.
A full-time Ohio worker needs to earn at least $23.82 an hour to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment, according to a separate annual report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition and COHHIO. Ohio also has a shortage of 266,000 affordable and available rental homes, according to the groups’ 2026 Gap Report.
Roth said the affordability trend is shutting out workers traditionally associated with stable, middle-class jobs, including firefighters and mail carriers. Dworkin said the consequences extend to employers and communities when essential workers cannot afford to live where they work.
The National Housing Conference called for more homes priced within reach of the workforce, as well as preserving existing housing and reducing unnecessary costs and delays in construction. The report found that workers in occupations that lost the ability to afford a home earned an average annual salary of $70,283.