With housing costs taking up as much as 50 percent of the median income in some states, the personal-finance website WalletHub recently released its report on the “States Where People Spend the Most & Least on Housing” to highlight where owning a home is unaffordable for the average person.

WalletHub analyzed mortgage and home energy payments in each of the 50 states, then added these costs together and compared them to the median household income in order to determine where people are spending the greatest percentage of their income on housing.

The states with the highest percentage of income spent were Hawaii (53.47), California (45.99), Oregon (36.27), Nevada (35.29), Washington (34.82), Massachusetts (34.61), Colorado (34.39), Idaho (32.73), Montana (31.96) and Utah (31.71).

The states with the lowest percentage of income spent on housing were Arkansas (21.21), Oklahoma (20.96), Indiana (20.83), Mississippi (20.79), Illinois (20.56), Ohio (20.38), Nebraska (20.37), Kansas (20.12) and West Virginia (19.94)                            

 “Homeowners and home buyers have faced whiplash over the past few years, with housing prices soaring and interest rates fluctuating from historic lows back up to the highest rates in more than a decade. In some states, housing costs can take up around 50 percent of the median income. In order to manage expensive mortgage payments and other key housing costs, it’s important for homeowners to budget effectively,” WalletHub Analyst Chip Lupo said in the survey.

“People in Hawaii spend the most on housing as a percentage of their income. The average Hawaiian shells out nearly 53 percent of their income between monthly mortgage payments and home energy costs. For comparison, Iowa residents only spend an average of less than 19 percent of their income on housing costs,” Lupo added.