Housing Prices-- a Uniquely 2020s Custody Problem

I've discussed the problems with relying on not moving houses or schools as a determining factor in child custody arrangements. It takes the focus off of who is the more stable parent and focuses primarily on staying where the child was living before the separation. The only logical way to interpret the fact that courts will make orders based on geography but not on parental stability is that they believe that moving houses or schools will cause a child significant and possibly irreparable long term harm, but being raised by a mentally unstable parent is a benign arrangement. So a parent who has no job and serious mental health problems, but who could move in with family to stay within the school district, gains an advantage over a parent who is mentally stable and employed but has to move to a new house or apartment. Many custody arrangements contain restrictions on where the parents can move, which can inhibit a parent's ability to take new employment. There are some good reasons for this. There are a lot of parents (especially dysfunctional ones) that will take the children to another state where the other parent can't see them. It's good that courts recognize this problem, but instead of looking at that as a problem of dysfunction and abuse, they looked at it as a problem of geography. Instead of saying, "A parent who is willing to prevent the kids from seeing the other parent for no discernible reason other than jealousy is not a good custodial parent", they said, "If we just keep both parents living in the same place, everything will be OK."

But in the 2020s there is another layer of trouble with the "custody based on geography" policy because of housing prices. The fact is that many people are having trouble affording multi bedroom housing-- which is something that courts want to see for custody. The judges who are making decisions about custody have been in law for decades and likely purchased houses in the 1990s. They probably don't understand just how difficult it has become to find housing because they have not had to deal with the problem of finding housing for a very long time.

Everyone knows housing prices are high, but I haven't seen anyone quantify just how out of control housing prices are. My clue came when I was reading The Big Short by Michael Lewis. Lewis related an anecdote about a housing policy analyst who saw trouble coming to the housing market in 2004 when national average house price was 4 times the national average income (instead of the baseline 3:1 ratio) and in places like Miami it was 8.5: 1 and in Los Angeles it was 10:1. How out of ratio is the housing market now? Let's take a look at the actual numbers...

(Note: there are a couple of different ways to compute income averages, like mean and per capita and also family vs. individual. I will be using individual income numbers here since I don't think it should be out of the realm of possibility for an individual to afford a mortgage, especially when we talk about divorce and single parent households. When I have both a per capita and individual mean number, I will calculate for both. All numbers are current as of May 2026. While these represent mortgage prices and many people end up renting after a divorce, the rental prices in an area are influenced by the home sale prices. And keep in mind, a couple of years ago housing prices were even higher than they are now.)

Let's start with a traditionally low cost place to live in the middle of nowhere like Twentynine Palms, California. Twentynine Palms has a Marine Corps Base and an entrance to Joshua Tree National Park and not much else. Because a good portion of its residents live in military housing, rent and home purchase prices used to be quite low to compete. A wave of Airbnbs came through during and after 2020, sweeping up much of the single family housing. In Twentynine Palms, the average single income is $62,554 and the per capita income is $31,188. The average house price is $275,000. This means that the average price of a home in Twentynine Palms is now 4.4 to 8.9 times the average income.

Just down the road from Twentynine Palms is Joshua Tree, home to the main entrance to Joshua Tree National Park and a meditation retreat. Jobs are not particularly plentiful in Joshua Tree and 22.6% of the population lives below the poverty level. Around 2020 there was an increase of people from the Los Angeles area moving there and also a big increase in Joshua Tree houses being bought up to be Airbnbs. Joshua Tree has become a very trendy destination and housing prices have risen there. The average single income is between $66,291 to $67,709 per year. Per capita income is between $33,512 to $34,776. So let’s take the single income and estimate $67,000 and a per capita of $34,000. Considering that 1 in 5 people in Joshua  Tree lives below the poverty line, $34,000 is probably more realistic and I suspect that a few wealthy families who fled there during COVID might be artificially inflating the  median, but we’ll run the higher number anyway. The median home sale price in Joshua Tree is between $365,000 to $389,000, so let’s use $375, 000 for our calculations here. We get 5.6 to 11 times the average income.

A lot of resort towns have been especially hit hard by the tsunami of COVID era Airbnbs, making housing extremely expensive and scarce. Let's take a look at a resort town like Big Bear Lake, CA. The per capita income is between $50,236 to $52,141. The area also has a poverty rate of 5.7% to 6.2%. The average home price is $570,000 to $579,000. Let’s assume $575,000 for an average home price, $78,000 for average income and $51,000 for per capita income. That means the average house price in Big Bear Lake is 7.4 to 11.3 times the average income.

What about urban centers? Los Angeles was 10:1 house price to income ratio in 2004 foreshadowing the housing bubble. 22 years later, how does it stack up? The median individual salary in the city is $72,384 annually and the median home sale price in the city of Los Angeles is between $1.0 million to $1.15 million. So let’s use $72,000 and $1.1 million to calculate the the house price to income ratio. We get 11.6 to 15.3 times the average income.

How about San Francisco? Individual annual salaries average between $98,000–$104,000. The average home value in San Francisco is approximately $1.35 million, while the median sale price for single-family homes is $2.1 million. Let’s use a single income of $100,000 and calculate for both average house and single family home prices. We get 13.5 to 21 times the average income. (Yikes!)

What's it like outside of California?

The average single income in Houston, Texas is $62,455 and the median home sale price in Houston is $330,000 to $345,000. So let’s use $63,000 and $338,000 to calculate. We get 5.4 times the average income. Austin has boomed over the last ten years becoming more like the trendy Bay Area of Texas. The prices have boomed as well. Per capita income is $62,862. We’ll use $63,000. The median home sale price in the city of Austin is $530,000 to $550,000, so we’ll use $540,000. We get 8.6 times the average income.

Per capita income for Salt Lake City, Utah is $51,173, with the majority of individual salaries ranging between $44,149 and $79,096 annually. The median home value in Salt Lake City is between $555,000 to $573,000. So let’s say $65,000 individual income and $565,000 average home price. We get 8.7 times the average income. In a smaller city in Utah like Draper, the per capita income is $58,193. Average home prices range between $815,000 to $900,000. So let's use $850,000 to calculate. And we get 14.6 times the average income.

What about some place Idaho that used to be quite rural and agricultural? Let's use Boise, Idaho as an example. Individual, full-time workers have median earnings of $66,524 for males and $55,823 for females and the average annual salary across all sectors in Boise is reported to be $65,164, so let’s use $65,000. The average home price is at $499,492 and the median sale price is roughly $495,000, so we’ll use the latter number since it reflects the sale price. We get 7.6 times the average income.

The average annual income in the United States right now is $67,000 and the average and the median home price is $403,200, which means that the average home price is six times the average income in the US. This is a nationwide problem that it's not confined to any one place. If you bought a house ten years ago and locked in a mortgage rate that was affordable then and later, due to the divorce, have to sell or move, you may not be able to afford housing in the same place-- particularly for a 2 or 3 bedroom house to accommodate the children and particularly if you have to child and/or spousal support. Or if you live in a town that is a tourist destination and got swept up in a tidal wave of Airbnbs after 2020, you may not be able to find housing at all.

It doesn't matter if the children have attended school in the area or how much of a burden it would be for them to move or how much the court believes that the parents should stay in the same place, in any given location in the United States, the housing market is at least 6 times the average income. There's no amount of court ordering joint custody that can make housing more affordable, yet courts will often place the highest value on keeping the children in the same area they have been. And since most judges have been practicing law for decades, they probably don't understand these numbers and what it means to pay for housing in the 2020s and why a responsible parent might have to move from the place where the family was living before. Geography does not determine good parenting. This is why if the question in custody is what is in the best interests of the child, courts need to look not at geography, but at actual ability to care for a child.