Fourth place: Santa Ana, Calif.
A four bedroom home in North Tustin is on the market for $649,900.
Median income: $87,300
Affordability score: 34.5%
Many of the booming Orange County economies were driven by the once-swelling housing bubble. Thousands of jobs were created in construction, the real estate industry, retail and mortgage lending. Once that bubble burst, a lot of these jobs disappeared.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts Santa Ana as part of the Los Angeles metro area for calculating unemployment rate and that, at 11.7% in March, was above the national average. Home prices have dropped substantially from the high they hit back in mid-2006, when the median Santa Ana home sold for $630,000. Prices have plummeted since; in the first three months of 2009, the median price was just $410,000. That caused affordability to improve but still only 34.5% of the homes sold were comfortably open to median-income earners.
NEXT: Fifth place: Los Angeles
Last updated May 24 2010: 1:00 PM ET
Source: National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and Wells Fargo
