MIAMI (CBSMiami) – When Stephanie Delgado began looking for a home for her family she found out pretty quickly what she wants and what she can comfortably afford, even with a good income, are two very different things. She had to make some concessions.

“I had to be open to not necessarily having a single family home and to maybe look into the townhomes,” Delgado said. “I had to be open to looking into moving a little further outside my prime zone.”

Despite all that residential construction we see, Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach is one of the least affordable large metro areas in the world. Real estate agents are keenly aware.

“We do find that bump in the road these days,” explained real estate agent Anthony Tadal, “especially, I would say, in the last year, year and a half if you’re a seller, the market has been great for you, you’ve been seeing the rise. If you’re a buyer, it has been tough as far as purchase power.”

On the Least affordable List, put out by the Miami Future Urban Initiative at FIU; Hong Kong is least affordable, followed by Sydney, Los Angeles, London, Toronto, New York then the Miami Metro area.

“Too many people who live in Greater Miami, housing is far too ex-expensive for their salaries and their wages,” said David Rifkind. He’s the Chair of FIU’s Landscape Architecture and Urban Design Department.

The FIU study shows 6 out of ten working adults in South Florida spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing.

“A lot of South Florida residents at the end of the year, have less than 10,000 dollars left after they’ve paid off their housing costs for everything else they have to pay for,” he noted.

Rifkind says the solution is investment in less expensive housing.

“We need a lot more affordable housing units,” he said. “This study shows we need something like 90,000 new units, affordable housing, over the next 10 years just to meet the national median of affordability.”