Redfin: Typical Family Spends 52% of Income on Housing and Childcare, Nearly 97% in Los Angeles

The typical American family buying a home this year spends 52% of its annual income just on housing and childcare, according to a report Redfin released Aug. 17 using data from childcare marketplace Winnie.

Rent alone doesn't cover it. Daycare alone doesn't cover it. Both stacked together eat more than half the paycheck before groceries, gas, or a car payment enter the picture.

Redfin and Winnie ran the numbers across the 100 largest U.S. metros, comparing the cost of buying a home today plus full-time childcare for one child against median local household income.

Where it's worst

Los Angeles tops the list. A median-earning working family there spends 96.8% of its income, $94,613 a year, on housing and childcare combined, against a median local income of $97,775, according to Redfin. That leaves about $3,000 a year for everything else.

New York City isn't far behind at 95%. San Francisco comes in at 94.2%, followed by Anaheim, California at 93.5% and San Jose at 83.1%, according to Redfin's data reported by HousingWire.

Where it's manageable

Little Rock, Arkansas is the cheapest of the 100 metros measured, at 39.8% of income, according to Redfin. The typical Little Rock family pays $29,151 a year for housing and childcare against a median income of $73,170.

Oklahoma City (40.8%) and Des Moines, Iowa (41.8%) round out the next-most-affordable spots, according to the Epoch Times, which cited the same Redfin data.

Dallas has the lowest childcare burden specifically, at just 11% of the combined total, followed by Charleston, South Carolina (11.4%) and Austin, Texas (11.6%), Epoch Times reported. Contrast that with Buffalo, New York, where childcare alone eats up nearly half of the combined housing-and-childcare bill.

Why the gap is so wide

Sara Mauskopf, co-founder and CEO of Winnie, said families need to think past the mortgage payment. "Families considering a move should weigh both of those big costs, as well as job opportunities, when deciding where to put down roots," Mauskopf said in a statement distributed via PR Newswire.

Mauskopf also flagged a problem that raw affordability numbers don't capture: availability. "If care is scarce or unaffordable, an otherwise affordable area may not be a practical place for a family with young children," she said.

A metro can look affordable on paper and still be useless to a young family if there are no open daycare slots within 20 miles. Redfin's own report acknowledges this, noting that costs can also shift once kids hit public pre-K or kindergarten, and that states like California, Florida and Wisconsin offer free universal pre-K that changes the math for families with preschool-age kids.

The business angle

The report doubles as the rollout for a new product. Redfin, now operating under Rocket, has partnered with Winnie to put local daycare and preschool information directly on home listings, including distance, reviews, financial aid options and staff certifications, according to Redfin's own release and confirmed by HousingWire.

The feature is live now on desktop and mobile, with an app version expected in September, according to HousingWire. Ariel Dos Santos, Redfin's chief product and design officer, framed it as solving a real gap: "When you're buying a home, you're also choosing a neighborhood that works for your family," Dos Santos said. "Bringing Winnie's childcare information directly to every listing on Redfin makes it easier to see what options are nearby while you're looking at homes, instead of having to search for that information separately."

Redfin gets a stickier product. Winnie gets distribution to every home shopper in the country. Families get one less spreadsheet to build themselves.

What the numbers don't settle

This is a snapshot, not a trend line. Redfin didn't publish year-over-year comparisons in this release, so it's unclear whether the 52% national figure is rising, falling, or holding steady compared to prior years. Care.com's 13th annual Cost of Care Report, released in January, found average weekly daycare costs for one child topped $300 last year, according to the Epoch Times, but that's a separate survey with its own methodology.

Republicans in Congress have generally pushed zoning reform and deregulation as the housing answer. Democrats have pushed federal childcare subsidies. Neither side's preferred fix shows up in this data, because Redfin's report measures the problem, not a policy remedy. Families in Los Angeles and New York are left doing the math on their own, for now.