NO VACANCY: It’s getting harder to rent or buy in America’s biggest cities

There is no inflation if you don’t want to live under a roof.

There is only one way to describe today’s housing market: a seller’s market. You can’t buy anything and you can’t rent anything. The only way you can put a roof over your head is to spend an extraordinary amount of money doing so.

Or, you can live in one of those shoeboxes that still cost you an arm and a leg.

It’s getting so bad in the nation’s metropolitan areas that the vacancy rate has fallen below one percent in more than one-third of the nation’s 75 largest cities, the U.S. Census Bureau says (via Bloomberg).

In fact, there are a dozen or so cities that have seen their vacancy rates slump to zero: Greensboro-High Point, North Carolina; Syracuse, New York; Louisville/Jefferson County, Kentucky; Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, Connecticut; Grand Rapids-Wyoming, Michigan; and Akron, Ohio.

The U.S. Census Bureau also left out this crucial point: It is getting harder to afford to buy or to rent. The former requires a significant down payment for an already expensive home and the latter consists of forking over nearly half of your income.