In the Media

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.

Allowing single-stairway four-to-six-unit buildings could stimulate the construction of badly needed new housing, especially in already-developed neighborhoods near public transportation and commercial areas. A study of the Boston area estimated that such a building code change had the potential to create 130,000 new homes simply by developing the vacant parcels within walking distance of transit.

Alexander Hermann is a housing researcher at Harvard and he says it boils down to supply and demand. "If you look back at the Great Recession and the housing boom and then the bust of the mid-2000s, a number of single-family home builders and a number of multi-family developers left the center all together, and one result of that is low levels of housing construction for a period of 15 years."

18% of Americans 65 and older were living in multigenerational homes as of 2021. Part of this could be from a lack of affordable alternatives; 13% of Americans over 75 could afford a median-priced nursing home, and 14% could afford daily home health visits, according to a 2023 study from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Even without an affordability provision in the law, towns and cities in Massachusetts are still able to include affordable housing in development plans because of inclusionary zoning (IZ). IZ programs can be mandatory or voluntary, and aim to help spur the construction of affordable housing. Nearly 75% of the IZ programs in Massachusetts are mandatory, according to a 2021 study by The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.