Press and Housing Data for Journalists

Looking for past coverage instead? See Van to Vault in the news for press mentions and where the data is listed.

What housing datasets does Van to Vault publish?

Full field definitions, methodology and machine-readable schema live on the open data page.

Housing figures reporters can cite today

• 46,746 Americans took out a mortgage in 2025 to buy a two-to-four unit home they would live in — down 34% from the 2021 peak of 70,516. (Duplex Buyers Atlas, 2025 HMDA public file.)
• The median house hacker now earns $127,000, up 57% from $81,000 in 2018. The median loan rose from $275,000 to $425,000 over the same period. (Atlas, 2018–2025.)
• Conventional lending has displaced FHA for these buyers. Conventional was 64.9% of owner-occupant 2–4 unit purchase loans in 2025, up from 51.3% in 2018; FHA fell from 43.9% to 28.2%. (Atlas.)
• Low-down-payment conventional loans roughly tripled after Fannie Mae began allowing 5% down on two-to-four unit homes in late 2023. (Atlas.)
• The Atlas covers 282 metro areas with at least 15 such loans each, 2018 through 2025, and is free to republish under CC BY 4.0.
• Rochester, NY ranks first in the Foothold Index. Entry price $160,000, and an owner keeps about $563 a month compared with renting (data as of 2026-08-06). Syracuse and Albany follow.
• Only 11 of 83 metros clear the affordability bar at the 6.66% mortgage rate used for that data cut (2026-08-06). For context, Freddie Mac put the 30-year average at 6.95% on 2026-09-17.
• 72 of 83 metros have a down payment assistance program that works on an owner-occupied two-to-four unit home. Seven have none that could be found and four could not be confirmed (checked July to September 2026).
• The largest single award found is $100,000, from the New York City HPD HomeFirst program (checked 2026-07).
• Most assistance program websites describe single-family rules only. This survey reads the two-to-four unit eligibility text directly, which is why several agencies corrected their entries in writing while it was being compiled.

Background reading: how the Foothold Index is built and down payment assistance on a duplex, metro by metro.

Neighbourhood-level work in progress: a cost analysis of house hacking in Lawrenceville and Bloomfield, built from Allegheny County sale records and 2026 millage, is at house hacking in Lawrenceville and Bloomfield. Custom cuts of it are available on request.

How to cite the Foothold Index and the DPA survey

Both datasets are licensed CC BY 4.0. Attribution plus a link is enough. The DOIs above resolve to the archived record, so they keep working after the figures are refreshed.

Suggested form: Stephan D., Van to Vault. Foothold Index: two-to-four unit affordability across 83 US metros, 2026. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22019647

Who compiles this data?

My name is Stephan D. I went from living in a van to owning a $470,000 duplex, starting with a $185,000 starter home I bought while cutting what I spent on rent. Van to Vault documents the arithmetic I used, as free calculators and open data, written at a reading level anyone can follow. Everything on the site is free forever: no paywalls and no gated tools.

How to request a custom data cut

I answer custom cuts of either dataset, by metro, price band or program type, usually the same day. Email vantovault@gmail.com and say what shape you need the file in.

What researchers have found in other cities

The two studies below are about other markets, not Van to Vault data. They sit in their own section on purpose: reporters covering a short-term rental debate usually need them, and they must never be read as findings from our datasets.

• Rents, prices and where the housing goes. Barron, Kung and Proserpio, Marketing Science (2021), using US-wide listing data and an instrumental-variables design, report that a 1% increase in Airbnb listings raises rents by 0.018% and house prices by 0.026% at the median owner-occupancy zip code, about $9 a month in rent for that zip. Their mechanism finding is the one that speaks to city policy: total housing supply is not affected, but short-term rental supply rises while long-term rental supply falls. The effect is larger where fewer homes are owner-occupied. Publisher record.
• What a registration ordinance actually did. Jin, Wagman and Zhong, NBER Working Paper 32537 (2024), studied Chicago, among the first large US cities to regulate comprehensively rather than ban. Active listings fell 16.4%, but the decline only became significant after regulators began receiving listing data feeds directly from the platforms. They found no detectable effect on the average before-tax price of a listing or on reservations per active listing. Paper and plain-language summary.

Disclosure: the Chicago study used data supplied by AirDNA. Van to Vault does not use AirDNA figures in its own datasets, because that vendor’s occupancy and revenue numbers are modelled rather than observed. Citing research that used a vendor is a different thing from publishing vendor numbers as our own, and it is better said out loud than discovered.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Foothold Index?

The Foothold Index is defined as a screen of two-to-four unit listings across 83 US metro areas that asks a narrower question than most affordability rankings: not where homes are cheap, but where a buyer with limited savings can get in and stay in. 23,424 listings were screened and 11,495 survived all seven tests.

Can you use down payment assistance on a duplex?

Down payment assistance on a duplex refers to assistance whose property-eligibility rules permit an owner-occupied two-to-four unit home. Across 83 metros checked by hand, 72 have such a program, 7 have none that could be found, and 4 could not be confirmed as of September 2026.

Are these datasets free to republish?

Yes. Free to republish refers to the CC BY 4.0 licence, which permits reuse of any kind, including commercial reuse, provided attribution is given and changes are noted.

How current are the figures?

Currency refers to the check date printed beside each figure. Foothold figures are as of 2026-08-06. Assistance program rules were read in July and August 2026, and every row carries its own check date.