From The New York Times written by Catherine Rampell 

One of the upsides of a crashing-and-burning housing market, as Edward Glaeser noted back in October, is that buying a home becomes more affordable.

And indeed, according to an index released by the National Association of Realtors, housing affordability was at an all-time high in December.

The Housing Affordability Index composite level for December was 158.8. A composite H.A.I. value of 158.8 means that a family earning the median income has 158.8 percent of the income needed to qualify for a mortgage on a median-priced home. (In other words, a higher index number means housing is more affordable; a lower index number means housing is less affordable.) The index had fallen during most of the housing bubble, when it became more and more expensive to buy a home. But as you'll see in the chart below, December's composite level was the highest the index has reached since the association began collecting this data in 1971.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/30/housing-affordability-at-record-high/

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