While 2018 saw home sales fall and listing inventories rise, buying a home still is a struggle for entry-level home shoppers, a new report by a Zillow-owned subsidiary shows.

Higher incomes are needed to afford even cheaper homes, the figures show. And three-fourths of the homes still are too pricey for the typical first-time buyer in Los Angeles and Orange counties, while four out of 10 homes in the Inland Empire are out of reach, the online real estate site reported.

The typical first-time buyer in the L.A.-Orange County area had a median income of $90,000 a year, the 13th-highest first-time buyer income among 35 big-city metro areas in the Zillow survey.

By comparison, the median income of non-buyers in those two counties was $55,600 a year, or more than $30,000 less than those who broke into the housing market. The median income for all Los Angeles-Orange County households was just under $70,000 a year, U.S. Census numbers show.

The L.A.-Orange County area had the smallest share of listings affordable to first-time buyers: Just 25.4 percent of the homes listed for under $420,000, an amount considered affordable to someone earning $90,000 a year. Southern California’s median home price (or price at the midpoint of all sales) was $100,000 above that amount: $522,750 in November, CoreLogic reported.

“With home prices climbing ever higher, and inventory yet to see sustained increases, getting a foot in the door is incredibly difficult for new buyers,” said Justin LaJoie, general manager for the survey’s author, Zillow-owned RealEstate.com (not to be confused with Realtor.com).

The median income for a typical first-time buyer in the Inland Empire was $79,100 a year, according to Zillow, the 11th-lowest entry-level income among the 35 metro areas in the survey. Buyers in that income group can afford to pay $369,000 for a home. Only 57 percent of the listings in the Inland Empire had asking prices of that amount or less.

The median income for all Inland Empire households, by comparison, was just under $62,000 a year.

Nationwide, the median income of a first-time buyer was $72,500; the non-buyer median income was $42,500.

The median down payment for first-time buyers was 14.5 percent, the survey found.

The Bay Area had the nation’s highest incomes among first-time buyers.

The median first-time buyer income was $151,000 in the San Jose area and $133,000 in San Francisco.

Still only about a third of the homes in those two markets were affordable to buyers at those income levels, the Zillow figures show.