A renter making the same income but looking to rent the median-valued U.S. rental home would need to spend almost 30 percent of their income on rent, up from roughly 26 percent in the pre-bubble years.

Rent affordability is better than it was historically in two large metros, Sacramento and Pittsburgh.

Halfway through 2016, an all-too-familiar housing affordability story continues to shape the U.S. housing market. Incredibly low mortgage interest rates are helping make homeownership more affordable, despite relatively rapid home value growth. But renting a home is decidedly unaffordable, even as growth in rents slows down.

As of Q2 2016, a potential homebuyer making the U.S. median income and seeking to buy the median-priced U.S. home with a 20 percent down payment and a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage at current prevailing rates would need to spend 14.4 percent of their income on a monthly mortgage payment. A typical renter making the same amount and looking to spend the median amount on rent each month would need to spend almost 30 percent (29.9 percent) of their income on rent, according to Zillow’s Q2 2016 affordability analysis.

Historically (the long-term average from 1985 through 1999), home buyers could have expected to spend about 21 percent of their income on a mortgage. Over the same period, renters could have expected to spend 25.8 percent of their income on rent. That means that as of Q2, it is more affordable today to buy a home than it was in more “normal” pre-bubble years, and far less affordable to rent.

There are a lot of factors that help determine housing affordability and the share of income needed to cover a mortgage or rent payment – particularly on the mortgage side. Income, the price of a home, the size of a down payment and the mortgage interest rate will all impact the amount of money needed to cover the mortgage each month. For renters, there are really only two factors at play – the monthly rent, and income.

So while both rents and home values have risen in recent years, because currently very low mortgage interest rates (currently hovering around 3.3 percent) help keep monthly payments down, affordability for buyers looks terrific. Since renters can’t take advantage of low interest rates to help finance their monthly payments to their landlords, they don’t get the same advantages. And mortgage affordability looks like it will be favorable for a while yet – mortgage interest rates will need to double from current levels before today’s home buyers will be paying the same share of income to a mortgage as their parents did in the 1980s and 1990s.

But the national housing market is really just a collection of local markets, and affordability looks pretty different across metros as local incomes, rents and home values change. In five of the largest 35 metro areas analyzed nationwide (San Jose, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami and Portland), buyers can currently expect to pay slightly more of their income today on a mortgage than they would have in the pre-bubble years – even with today’s very low mortgage rates. And in two large markets (Sacramento and Pittsburgh), affordability has improved somewhat for renters compared to the pre-bubble years.