The phrase “K-shaped economy” seems to be everywhere these days, but perhaps the best example of the great financial divide in the U.S. today appears in the housing market. In this economy, affluent households continue to accumulate wealth through stock market and real estate equity gains while the lower end of the financial spectrum remains flat.

“The K-shaped housing market started as the stock market went up and housing affordability went in the other direction,” says New York City-based Jake Krimmel, a Senior Economist for Realtor.com. “Mortgage rates shot up, but home-price appreciation didn’t slow down, which makes it more unaffordable for the middle- to lower-end income earners to buy a home.”

Luxury sales and values continue to outpace the lower end of the housing market, where sales have slowed along with demand and price appreciation. Luxury home buyers, who are largely immune to mortgage-rate pressures, continue to buy homes and benefit from resilient inventory, according to Realtor.com. On the entry level, households are sidelined by the lack of supply and price-sensitive buyers have largely exited the market.

“The upper classes have an enormous amount of financial power in stocks and their 401(k) plans as well as in home equity,” Krimmel says. “There’s also more luxury supply, especially from new homes.”

Even more important, he says, is the unlocking of the lock-in effect that’s affecting the general market by tying up inventory and keeping people in the homes they bought with lower mortgage rates. “Since luxury buyers don’t feel the pressure to borrow money at a high rate, they’re less concerned about selling their house even if it has a low mortgage rate,” he says.

For some affluent households, real estate offers an opportunity to reallocate stock market windfalls into hard assets as part of a wealth preservation strategy. Still, there are nuances in K-shaped markets. Below is a look at several locations around the country and how the various sectors are faring.