‘Good luck’ finding a $400K home: Jake rips Seattle’s unaffordable housing market

While U.S. residents are facing one of the most unaffordable housing markets in the country’s history, “The Jake and Spike Show” on KIRO Newsradio put the national numbers into perspective with how it translates to Seattle.

KIRO hosts Jake Skorheim and Spike O’Neill both noted that several factors contribute to the housing market’s unaffordability, though Jake believed hope may be on the horizon.

“The U.S. housing market right now is the most unaffordable in history. I do feel like there is going to be a housing market correction sometime in the near future,” Jake said. “Right now, if you want to go out and buy your first home in Seattle, I don’t know a ton of people who can afford that.”

Jake used a more than decade-long comparison to gauge just how bad the numbers are by pulling statistics from 2012.

“Those prices were not the case back in 2012, when the average price of a home was roughly $450,000,” Jake said. “The average mortgage on a $400,000 home right now is half of what a house sells for in Seattle. Wherever you can get a $400,000 home, good luck, but the mortgage is $3,000 a month. Do you know what it was in 2021? $1,500.”

“It’s doubled because of the increase in interest. That’s nearly doubled as well,” Spike responded.

A generational shift in homeownership

Jake revealed the startlingly low percentage of 30-year-old married couples who were able to buy their first home in 2025, compared to the 1960s.

“This is crazy. In 1960, 52% of people were married and owned a home by 30, but in 2025, that percentage had fallen to only 12%,” Jake said.

“I think there are a couple of factors at play here. If you raise that number to 40, married and owning a home, it’s different, because I think people don’t get married as early as they used to,” Spike responded. “I guarantee the bulk of this number is based upon the price of housing and the cost of money. It’s the interest rate increases, it’s the cost of housing in general, but again, kids ain’t getting married and buying a home by 30, at least, not as many as they used to.”

Spike’s assumption was correct. As of 2022, between 62-69% of couples own a home by the age of 40.

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Listen to “The Jake and Spike Show” weekdays from noon to 3 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.