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Previous studies on housing affordability in China were concentrated in China’s coastal and central regions. The purpose of this paper is to investigate housing affordability of urban residents in Northwest China. Moreover, this paper attempts to understand the consistency and influencing factors of various indicators on the evaluation of housing affordability.

This paper uses multiyear data on house sales, residents’ incomes and living expenses from 2011 to 2022. House price-to-income ratio, housing affordability index and residual income approach were calculated by using these data and used as the measure of housing affordability.

The results show that there are obvious differences in the housing affordability among the Xi’an, Lanzhou and Yinchuan during 2011–2022, and the housing affordability of residents in cities with small population and economic scale is better. The ability of most urban residents to afford suitable housing is still poor, and the ability to afford small-sized housing is better. Most families with below-middle income have poor housing affordability. It is also observed that although various indicators had similarities in the evaluation of residents’ housing affordability, the comprehensive evaluation results of multiple indicators were more reliable.

The research results provide a basis for the decision-making of the government’s urban housing policy and improvement of residents’ housing conditions.

The results have a clear understanding of the housing affordability of urban residents in Northwest China. The study found that the geographical location and topography of the city is also a factor affecting the housing affordability.

With the rapid increase in both household discretionary income and housing price, how to improve housing affordability is the vital challenge for China, especially for the northwestern region where the household income is lower than that in the eastern region. This paper aims to provide an insight into the housing affordability by analyzing the influence factors of purchasing standard housing in Lanzhou, which is the second largest city in Northwest China.

Price to income ratio (PIR) and housing affordability index (HAI) approaches were applied in this study to measure housing affordability for Lanzhou.

The results show that the PIR values for Lanzhou range from 6.02 to 7.23 between 2001 and 2008. The value exhibits an increasing trend before 2004 and a decreasing trend after 2004. The HAI values vary between 62.0 and 83.2 and are higher from 2001 to 2003 than those from 2004 to 2008. It was observed that the level of influence of the household discretionary income, housing price and the mortgage interest rate on these two values differs significantly in the different studied periods. This indicates that housing affordability in Lanzhou is lower than the acceptable level.

The paper establishes an understanding of the level of housing affordability in Northwest China, and provides the basis for the formulation of the new government's housing policy for this region.