Is Marathon County real estate getting less affordable?

Getting Real with Real Estate, 2024 wrap up

I thought we would start this report out a little differently this time since I came across some data that tells a very interesting story about home affordability in Marathon County.

The data comes from Forward Analytics, which has been putting together some very interesting metrics on Wisconsin lately, particularly focusing on county-level data.

The latest is an affordability index the firm put together covering the whole state for multiple years. It takes the median home price and the median income of each county and compares that to the calculation of the amount of income a household would need to afford the median house for that year.

The good news is that while about half of the state has become unaffordable in 2024, Marathon County is still one of the more affordable counties, and probably the most affordable that has a sizable city.

The bad news is, like much of the country, it’s becoming more unaffordable over time.

I pulled out the data from Forward Analytics and charted it to demonstrate how that’s changed over time. What I found surprised me.