Back when my husband and I bought our first home, the $740 monthly payment seemed enormous. Our real estate agent was sanguine, saying, “You’ll just have to eat hot dogs for awhile.”

But we hate hot dogs, I thought. Translation, I don’t want to be house poor.

Things were tight – for years, it seemed. But we had lurched onto the equity train and it was a smart move.

Even smarter given today’s skyrocketing entrance price for new home buyers.

A recent study commissioned by Homes for Working Families, done by Moody’s Economy.com, shows that even if they like hot dogs, fewer families than ever can afford to buy in – this despite the recent slump in housing prices. The affordability index is worst for first-time buyers who are trying to get their foot on the train because homes in the bottom third of prices had the biggest jump in prices over the past seven years.

“The median income families are falling into the gaps,” said Beverly Barnes, executive director of Homes for Working Families, at a presentation on the agency’s findings. “We are talking about teachers, policemen, firefighters and more.”

On the heels of that announcement came another study, “Paycheck to Paycheck.” Commissioned by the Center for Housing Policy, it found that that the majority of workers are priced out of most of the nation’s housing markets. In fact, workers in the five fastest-growing job fields are priced out of the majority of housing markets.

Affordability slid fast in the first part of this decade, from 2000-2007, a direct see-saw effect caused by the whopping appreciation homeowners earned on their properties during the same time period, said spokespeople for the Working Families study.

In the good news/bad news category, Chicago’s home prices didn’t rise as much as elsewhere in the nation, said Celia Chen, director of housing economics for Moody’s Economy.com, so our homes are more affordable. Chicago’s affordability index for 2007 was 87.3 on a 100 scale. A 100/100 rating would mean that everyone who earns a median income could afford a median-priced house.

Chicago ranked 20^th of the top 20 cities with the biggest “affordability gaps” for middle income households, Moody’s reported, and became slightly less affordable in the past year.

In 2006, according to the Paycheck to Paycheck study, the median home price in Chicago was $254,000; in 2007 it was $262,000. Households need an income of more than $85,000 to purchase either one, based on a guideline of paying 28 percent of income for housing, including insurance and taxes. The qualifying incomes were based on paying 10 percent down for the home.

You might think that with the recent slump in housing sales and prices, homes would be getting more affordable.

But observers say it’s just too little, too late, and real estate agents say home prices in the Chicago area won’t go down much more than they already have.

If homes are priced to sell, says agent Richard Vesely, with Coldwell Banker Primus Realty in Oswego, “they can’t go much lower, unless they have owned their home for a long time (and built up a lot of equity). They don’t have the room to do that.”

Unfortunately, the market for renters is not getting any better. Because there is starting to be a backlog of people who would otherwise be buying a home, there are more renters. There are more houses that would have been sold that are being converted to rentals, too, but the overall effect is still one of greater demand than affordable supply.

In 2006, according to the Paycheck to Paycheck study, the average two-bedroom apartment cost $901 a month, and, based on the 30 percent of income guideline, the renter would need an hourly wage of $17.33 to pay for it. In 2007, the same apartment cost $935 and required an hourly wage of $17.98 to pay for it, an increase of 3.77 percent. On an annual basis, you’ll need to make about $37,400 to afford a two-bedroom apartment.

And, in Chicago, more than a third of households have to pay more than 30 percent of their income for housing, according to the organization Housing Illinois.

Both the average home price and the average rental price squeeze out a lot of workers, especially those in the middle income professions, such as office clerks and retail sales people. According to Paycheck to Paycheck, nurses could afford to buy a home in 108 of 201 markets but other benchmark workers — retail salespeople, customer service reps, food preparation workers and office clerks — were priced out of most homes and apartments.

Hot dog sellers, too.