Housing affordability has become a defining economic issue across much of the world, but the relationship between home prices and incomes differs more than many people realize. The World’s Most Affordable Housing MarketsSaudi Arabia and the UAE have the lowest home price-to-income ratios in the dataset at 3.0. In the U.S., rising mortgage rates and constrained housing supply have weakened affordability in recent years. Around three billion people worldwide remain underserved by the housing market as home prices continue to outpace incomes in many countries. Why Housing Affordability Is a Global ChallengeThe data shows that housing affordability depends less on a country’s overall wealth than on how closely home prices track local incomes.