Our Top 10 Blogs of 2025

Soaring home prices, rising costs for homeowners and renters, and a new social housing movement: In case you missed them, our top blogs of this year examined persistent housing challenges in the US and opportunities for reforms.

1. In Home Prices Surge to Five Times Median Income, Nearing Historic Highs, Peyton Whitney explored rising home price-to-income ratios and how this measure of homebuyer affordability varied across markets in 2024.
    
2. In New Projections Anticipate a Slowdown in Household Growth and Housing Demand, Daniel McCue explained the Center’s projections for the decades ahead and detailed a future in which the number of households will grow far more slowly than previously experienced. Daniel’s blogs on the rising costs of homeownership and lower interest rates failing to offset effects of high home prices were also popular this year.
    
3. Susanne Schindler’s Why the New Social Housing Movement Needs to Think About Design explored the emerging social housing movement in the US and why the exclusion of design from the conversation represents a missed opportunity.
    
4. Unease in the Housing Market Amid a Worsening Affordability Crisis by Chris Herbert summarized findings from our 2025 State of the Nation’s Housing report, including the effects of high home prices and interest rates, rising insurance premiums and property taxes, high rents, and reductions in federal supports.
    
5. In Home Repairs Are Out of Reach for Many Lower-Income Homeowners, Sophia Wedeen showed that homeowners with lower incomes spent significantly less on all types of remodeling and repairs in 2023 and were by far the most burdened by these expenses. Our first LIRA (Leading Indicator or Remodeling Activity) release of the year, detailing the 2025 outlook for home improvement and repair spending, was also a popular read.
    
6. California’s Homeowners Insurance Market Is a National Bellwether by Steve Koller explored the residential property insurance market in California leading up to and in the aftermath of the January 2025 Los Angeles fires.
    
7. Jennifer Molinsky’s One in Three Older Households Is Cost Burdened highlighted worrying trends in housing affordability for older adults as well as the increasing need for supports to help older households afford their housing and the services they need to stay in their homes.
    
8. Surveying Missing Middle Trends in the US and Massachusetts—Challenges and Opportunities by Amy Love Tomasso examined barriers to the production of small-scale multifamily housing in Massachusetts. Amy’s blog proposing policy and regulatory reforms to encourage production of middle housing was also widely read this year.
    
9. In Five Ways Residential Mobility Has Changed in the Pandemic Era, Riordan Frost examined mobility trends before, during, and after the pandemic, revealing that some aspects of mobility meaningfully changed.
    
10. Two-Thirds of Working-Age Renters Struggle to Afford Basic Needs by Whitney Airgood-Obrycki, Alexander Hermann, and Sophia Wedeen explored how rising rents and inflation have made it increasingly difficult for renter households to afford a modest but adequate standard of living.