In the Media

Bigger homes also are scarce because empty nesters are still in them, says Jennifer Molinsky of Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. Baby-boomer households without children living at home own an estimated 28 percent of the nation’s large houses with three or more bedrooms compared with just 14 percent of millennial households with children, despite this generation outnumbering its boomer counterparts.

High rents have also begun to affect those at middle-income levels as well. "Households earning $30,000 to $45,000 per year, the rates of cost burden have been rising faster than for lower-income or higher-income households," says Daniel McCue, a senior research associate at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. "We've seen more and more moderate- and middle-income households feeling the burden."

“It’s pretty much an impossible market, even for middle-income households,” said Alexander Hermann, a senior research associate at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. From April 2019 to April 2024 in counties where data is available, the median list price rose 55% to $102,850, according to an NBC News analysis of Redfin data.

As for renting, that is unaffordable for half of renters, according to a study by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. Which creates fertile ground for the phenomenon known as ... the Boomerang Kid. Many young adults are living with their parents because it makes so much financial sense, according to a new survey by financial services firm Thrivent. In fact, 46% of parents say their adult children have "boomeranged" back home at some point – and 50% of them say sky-high housing costs are to blame.

Share of renter households spending more than half of their income on housing costs, by income level. Source: Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Nearly one third of all households now spend more than a third of their income on housing - the standard cut-off for affordability - the highest level since 2015, according to Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies.

“I think it’s been a widespread issue that’s not just the high-cost areas,” said Daniel McCue, senior research associate at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. “It’s very much across the nation.” McCue pointed to Columbus, Ohio, as an example of a place where a historically stable market suddenly began to surge during the Covid pandemic, noting that Columbus had “somewhere around 40% growth in prices between 2021 and 2023 — something that hadn’t been seen in decades.”

“We just don’t have sufficient options that are affordable and accessible and well-connected to services for older adults,” said Jennifer Molinsky, who directs research on housing and ageing at Harvard’s joint center for housing studies.

Abbe Will, the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies' Senior Research Associate & Associate Director of Remodeling Futures, joins Brad Smith on Wealth! to talk the interplay between the state of the US housing market and Americans' willingness to spend on home projects.

We’re talking more about multigenerational communities,” noted Jennifer Molinsky at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. “And I think that there are a lot of people who want to be surrounded by people of all ages and have those daily interactions, and I do think we are seeing different organizations respond to that.”