In the Media

At today’s prices, a family would need to earn $126,700 a year to afford monthly payments on an average home purchased in 2024, up from $79,300 annually in 2021, according to a report from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Alexander Hermann at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies said where you live also makes a big difference. “Austin's the poster child for rents declining right now, right,” Hermann said. “And there are other markets, especially in the South, but also in the West, where you see rent declines. But every single market in the Northeast and Midwest continue to see their rents rise.”

Domestic migration—moving from one state to another—has hit a historic low. According to the latest housing report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, just 8.3-percent of households relocated in the past year. That’s not only the lowest rate since the 1970s, it’s a sign of a broader slowdown in how Americans are reshaping the map.

Despite nationwide, bipartisan skepticism of government and tax increases, Seattle’s voters showed that in light of a severe affordability crisis, a new role for the public sector and a new, dedicated fiscal revenue stream for housing were not only necessary, but possible.

“The signals are starting to happen now, and we're starting to see limited development because of the better understanding of what the risks are,” said Carlos Martín, director of the Remodeling Futures Program at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. “It's really a fine-tooth comb that you have to look through, in terms of all the available land.”

Ignoring for a moment the significant pain that will be inflicted on all tenants while enacting this strategy of building housing that the majority of renters do not want, recent research from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies found that the benefits of the construction of new apartments for rent does not find its way down to help those who need affordable rents. Given previous rent inflation, it is highly unlikely rents will fall here in any meaningful way, if at all.

This year's State of the Nation's Housing report, released earlier this week by the Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS) of Harvard University, found that the movement of Americans across the country has declined in 2024 all across the country, including in the states that are traditionally the most popular among movers.

The U.S. housing market is clouded with uncertainty, a new report by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University finds. Chris Herbert, the managing director of JCHS, joins to break down the data.

In 2024, for the third straight year, the median size of a new single-family home in the U.S. has shrunk, to 2,150 square feet. That’s down from nearly 2,500 square feet back in 2013, and startlingly close to the roughly 2,100 square foot average seen in 2009 at the depth of the global financial crisis. It’s a downsizing that underscores just how hard it is for most people to afford to buy a home today, and the extent to which homebuilders are adjusting their offerings to meet demand. This telling figure comes from The State of the Nation’s Housing, an annual report just released by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Despite one of the more substantial surges of new apartment construction in decades, the benefits of growing supply have not trickled down to the most cost-burdened renters in the US. That’s the conclusion of Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, which this week released its annual State of the Nation’s Housing Report, one of the most in-depth studies linking housing costs and renter incomes.