In the Media

"Improving America’s Housing" is issued every two years and tracks significant changes in the home repair and renovation markets over time, utilizing data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s American Housing Survey conducted by the Census Bureau. But it’s not an industry trend report, says Sophia Wedeen, senior research associate at the JCHS; rather, "Improving America’s Housing" speaks to the renovation market’s health, possible causes for fluctuations, and the effects that renovations can have on the housing market at large.

Many Americans who left large cities during the pandemic headed to suburbs, small cities and rural areas. Since then, net migration outflow from big cities has tapered off, returning to the prepandemic trend of suburbanization, said Riordan Frost of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.

Younger people are waiting and seeing as they continue to trail their parents’ generation in terms of homeownership, which can be an important financial milestone. “Homeowners have about 40 times the wealth of renters,” said Daniel McCue, senior research associate at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

According to a new report from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, Improving America’s Housing, homeowner spending for disaster repairs has trended up in all regions of the country, totaling $49 billion in 2022 and 2023, as compared to $16 billion in 2002 to 2003. This also means that disaster repair spending as a share of total home improvement spend went from an average of 4.4% in the decade before 2004 to 6.4% in the decade since 2013.

The US remodeling market has been soaring in the US in recent years but it's been difficult for the industry to keep up. New research out today shows the issues plaguing the industry and where more investment is needed. For more on this, KCBS Radio news anchor Margie Shafer spoke with Carlos Martín, director of the Remodeling Futures Program at Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Between the Great Recession of 2008-2009 and the end of 2024, homeowners insurance premiums have increased by 74 percent while home prices rose by more than 40 percent, according to a recent study by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.

The rise in demand for American houses after the pandemic owes much more to millennials’ behaviour (as low interest rates at last enabled them to get a foot on the housing ladder) than migration, suggests Riordan Frost of the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

As of 2023, 22.6 million renter households spent more than 30 percent of their income on rent and utilities, up by 2.2 million since 2019. More than half, or 12.1 million, of those spent more than 50 percent of their income on housing costs, according to recent research by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard. Chris Herbert, the center’s director, explains why renting continues to grow less affordable and what cities can try to do about it.

The Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University reported in 2024 that nearly a quarter of American homeowners are “cost-burdened” (meaning that more than thirty per cent of their income goes to housing). Rising insurance premiums, increased property taxes, and inflation have hit low-income homeowners especially hard, particularly those over sixty-five years old who are on fixed incomes.

In 2023, 83% of renters who earned less than $30,000 a year were "cost-burdened," meaning they devoted more than 30% of their incomes to rent and utilities, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard Universities. That compares to half of all renters.