For a long time, Ohio's pitch was simple: good jobs and houses people could actually afford. A new national report says the second half of that promise has slipped fast.
Ohio recorded the largest statewide loss in homeownership affordability in the country from 2020 to 2025, according to the National Housing Conference's second annual "Priced Out: When a Good Job Isn't Enough" report. In 2020, 67% of the occupations tracked in Ohio's metro areas could afford a typically priced home with a 10% down payment. By 2025, just 26% could, the Ohio Capital Journal reported. NHC's release puts the drop at 40.97 percentage points, the steepest of any state.
Mansfield, Cleveland, Springfield, Toledo and Akron all ranked among the 25 largest affordability declines in the country.
Mansfield leads the slide
Mansfield took the biggest hit in Ohio. A typically priced home there cost $115,041 in 2020, and the income needed to qualify was $28,483, according to the report. By 2025, that home cost $188,863 and required an income of $62,931, a 121% jump.
NHC said the share of tracked occupations able to buy in Mansfield fell from 82% to 30%. Its 52-point loss was one of the largest of any metro area in the country. In Columbus, the share fell from 40% to 9%.
In 2020, Mansfield teachers, EMTs and paramedics, firefighters and mail carriers could afford a typical home, the Capital Journal reported. By 2025, firefighters, mail carriers, executive secretaries and loan officers no longer could.
"When teachers, firefighters, EMTs, postal workers and other essential workers are increasingly priced out of the communities they serve, it is not just a housing problem—it is a workforce and economic problem," said David M. Dworkin, NHC's president and CEO.
NHC's release also listed Springfield and Toledo among the sharpest recent losses nationally, from 2023 to 2025.
The problem goes well beyond Ohio. Nationally, only 14% of the occupations across the metro areas NHC analyzed could afford a typical home with 10% down in 2025. The East North Central region, which includes Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin, had the steepest regional decline at nearly 37 percentage points.
These aren't low-wage jobs. Nationally, NHC said, the average salary among occupations that lost the ability to buy a home between 2020 and 2025 was $70,283.
Renters feel it too
Renting has held up better, but it's slipping too. In 2020, 77% of occupations in Ohio could afford a two-bedroom apartment, and that dropped to 69% in 2025, according to the report.
Marcus Roth, spokesperson for the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio, said people who can't buy stay renters longer, which pushes rents up. "There's a huge (rental housing) shortage," Roth told the Capital Journal. "That increased demand has driven up the cost of rents, so we're seeing the impact in the rental market too."
The Capital Journal noted that Ohio is short 266,000 affordable and available rental units, according to the 2026 Gap Report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition and COHHIO. A full-time worker needs to earn at least $23.82 an hour to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment in Ohio.
NHC's study looks at nearly 300 occupations across 390 metro areas. It uses federal wage data, Zillow home values and HUD fair market rents.
Dworkin's prescription was aimed squarely at supply. "Ohio needs more homes at prices its workforce can afford," he said. "That means building and preserving housing near jobs, reducing unnecessary costs and delays, and aligning federal, state and local policies around increasing supply."
Why it matters for Contractors
The report is a warning and an opportunity. In places like Mansfield, Springfield and Toledo, housing used to be cheap enough that there wasn't much pressure to build. That has changed. The people now priced out are teachers, firefighters and mail carriers, the same steady-income buyers builders want. Contractors who can deliver smaller, simpler homes and apartments at lower cost, whether starter homes, townhomes, infill houses or modest rentals, should find more demand and more public support, as cities and the state look for ways to cut "unnecessary costs and delays." Watch for local zoning changes, gap financing programs and housing funds aimed at workforce housing. Those programs are where much of this new construction is likely to start.