{"id":23,"date":"2026-09-20T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.room-vu.com\/mahoganyrhodes-com\/2026\/09\/20\/cities-where-dave-ramseys-25-housing-rule-still-works\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T12:00:00","slug":"cities-where-dave-ramseys-25-housing-rule-still-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mahoganyrhodes.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/20\/cities-where-dave-ramseys-25-housing-rule-still-works\/","title":{"rendered":"Cities Where Dave Ramsey\u2019s 25% Housing Rule Still Works"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"roomvu-news-container\">\n<p>As someone who has spent over two decades immersed in the real estate markets of California and Georgia, I\u2019ve seen affordability benchmarks put to the test year after year. The classic 25% housing rule\u2014spending no more than a quarter of your income on housing\u2014just doesn\u2019t hold up in 2026 for cities like Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, and New York. Even buyers coming in with a solid 20% down payment and locking in a 15-year loan at 5.82% are finding median home prices out of reach compared to local incomes. What does this mean for buyers and sellers? It\u2019s a market that demands strategic thinking: considering longer loan terms, exploring value-add properties, or increasing earning power. My role as a market strategist is to help clients navigate these realities, leveraging disciplined negotiation and positioning expertise to maximize opportunity\u2014especially in the nation\u2019s most competitive markets. When it comes to protecting client equity and finding the right fit, creativity and precision have never been more essential.<\/p>\n<p>\t<a class=\"roomvu-news-continue\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aol.com\/articles\/dave-ramseys-25-housing-rule-170013000.html\"><\/p>\n<div>Continue to full article<\/div>\n<p>\t<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As someone who has spent over two decades immersed in the real estate markets of California and Georgia, I\u2019ve seen affordability benchmarks put to the test year after year. The classic 25% housing rule\u2014spending no more than a quarter of your income on housing\u2014just doesn\u2019t hold up in 2026 for cities like Los Angeles, San [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":238,"featured_media":52,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mahoganyrhodes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mahoganyrhodes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mahoganyrhodes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mahoganyrhodes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mahoganyrhodes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mahoganyrhodes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mahoganyrhodes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mahoganyrhodes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mahoganyrhodes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mahoganyrhodes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}