There is an affordability crisis building in Miami.

In a fourth quarter market report released this week, ATTOM Data Solutions provided stats on price and wage growth in Miami, and the numbers showed a less-than-complimentary relationship.

Since the market’s bottom, the median home sales prices in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach Counties have ballooned 134, 125 and 106 percent, respectively – median prices in all three are now above $200,000.

During that same time, wages have accelerated with decidedly less fervor, rising about 10 percent in Broward and Miami-Dade, and only 3 percent in Palm Beach.

Miami’s affordability crisis

While ATTOM’s figures do show a drop in the share of wages that homeowners, on average, shell out for housing expenses, the overall amounts needed to comfortably purchase a home in each county remain above 30 percent. And as we reported recently, when looking strictly at the typical starter-home buyer in Miami, the share of income necessary to purchase makes a dramatic jump to over 50 percent.

The stat on starter-home buyers is particularly pertinent, because both Miami’s low-end home inventory has been shrinking – the number of for-sale homes under $300,000 fell 28 percent between Oct. 2015 and Oct. 2016 – and its mortgage denial rates have been going through the roof; the city’s denial rate is 7 points higher than any other market in the country. So while overall homes may be more affordable, the same is not true for the residents that need affordability the most.

The question now becomes: will this trend continue in 2017?