🏠 Wisconsin (WI) · 2026 Housing Data

What Salary Do You Need
to Buy a Home in Wisconsin?

$89K+
Salary Needed
$285,000
Median Home Price
$2,075/mo
Total Monthly Cost

The Real Numbers in Wisconsin

The median home price in Wisconsin is $285,000. With a 20% down payment and a 6.8% mortgage rate, your monthly PITI payment comes to $2,075/month — including principal, interest, property taxes (1.85% avg.), and insurance.

To qualify under standard bank underwriting (28% front-end DTI), you need a gross annual income of at least $89,000. Wisconsin's median household income is approximately $67,000/year, giving the state a price-to-income ratio of 4.3×.

At 4.3×, Wisconsin is one of the more affordable states in the country — most buyers earning the median income can qualify for the median home.

Median Home Price (Wisconsin)$285,000
20% Down Payment$57,000
3.5% FHA Down Payment$9,975
Monthly P&I Payment$1,486/mo
Property Tax (est. 1.85%/yr)$439/mo
Home Insurance (est.)$150/mo
Total PITI Payment$2,075/mo
Salary Needed (28% DTI)$89K+/year
Price-to-Income Ratio4.3× median income
FRC Market DemandWARM
See if your income qualifies for a home in Wisconsin
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📋 Data Sources: Median home prices from NAR & Zillow Research. Property tax rates from Tax Foundation. Income data from US Census Bureau ACS. Mortgage rates from Freddie Mac PMMS. All data updated 2026. Educational use only — not financial advice. Learn more →
The part no calculator can tell you

Numbers like these tell you what you can afford. They cannot tell you whether a lender will say yes — and that varies more than almost anyone realises. In the complete 2025 federal record, approval rates across the 100 largest FHA lenders ran from 98.2% down to 21.3%. Same program, same year.

And it is not simply who applies where: holding state, loan amount, income, debt-to-income and loan-to-value constant, applicant mix explains only a 2.7× range in expected outcomes.

Which lenders approve most → Your metro's lenders → Apply to more than one? →

CFPB HMDA 2025, computed by FinanceRateCalc · rates reflect applicant mix as well as lender practice · historical observation, not a prediction · free, CC BY 4.0.

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FinanceRateCalc · Independent analysis of the complete federal HMDA record · Measured, not assumed. · No lender or AI vendor funds or previews this work.