In the Media

Jennifer Molinsky, who directs the Housing an Aging Society Program at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, thinks there won’t be a “great senior selloff” in the housing market, but she worries about where aging boomers are going to live.

“It’s that weird combination of stability and security,” Carlos Martín, the project director for the Remodeling Futures Program at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, said. “We have a very unique way of thinking about housing. It is associated with a lot of our cultural imagery in this country, as well as our financial situation.”

The publication of a new research paper from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University has provided policymakers with a useful nationwide assessment of different state-level policies regarding Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) in the United States.

Homeowners spent $489 billion on improvements and repairs over the 12 months ending in September, according to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, a 5.4% gain over the previous period on top of a 17% gain the year before.

Jennifer Molinsky, project director of the Housing an Aging Society program at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, said advocacy for aging adults at the county and city levels — where most zoning decisions are made — is essential to creating more housing that is accessible for older adults.

To afford that, a household would need an annual income of almost $300,000 for the single-family home, or more than $255,000 for the condo, to cover mortgage and other costs, said Daniel McCue, senior research associate at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

At the core of the problem are “age-old supply and demand issues,” said Chris Herbert, managing director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.

Vacancy rates are rising, said Alexander Hermann, a research associate at the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. “You’ve had this huge rush to build apartments in the last couple of years, and projects are bigger and bigger. It’s more common now to be building 50 or more units,” he said. “You can start to see where new supply is coming online, you see starker and stronger rent decreases.”

“When people approach the decarbonization question, it’s almost always one of technology and economics,” said Carlos Martín, a researcher at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

The median selling price for single-family homes in Greater Boston hit a record high of $910,000 in July. To afford those prices, a household would need an annual income of at least $300,000, according to Daniel McCue, a senior research associate at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.