In the Media

Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies in its annual State of the Nation’s Housing report released 21 June estimates that 2.4 million potential homebuyers have been priced out of buying a home with rising costs.

First-time homebuyers and people of color have been particularly affected by higher home prices and mortgage interest rates, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University’s annual State of the Nation’s Housing report.

A lot of local governments also have strict zoning laws and regulatory barriers that make it hard for developers to build, especially lower-cost, high-density housing, according to Chris Herbert, managing director at the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.

“If you give everyone demand-side subsidies, like vouchers, and there’s a supply shortage, it’s going to drive up prices,” Chris Herbert, the managing director of Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, told me. It costs the state more, and landlords often wind up pocketing the profits.

Spending on home renovations is expected to slow this year because of factors such as declining home sales and values, rising interest rates, continuing inflation and rumblings of a coming recession, says Abbe Will, senior research associate with Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

“If you look at rental vacancy rates, they’re extremely low,” said Whitney Airgood-Obrycki, a senior research associate at the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. “It’s really hard for people to find an affordable place to move to. It’s extremely tight, especially for low-income renters.”

“If you are a homeowner, you have access to incredible amounts of equity right now,” said Whitney Airgood-Obrycki, a senior research associate at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. But this also means a huge number of potential home buyers are locked out of the market.

The census tract that includes the area surrounding the Kenmore MBTA station saw median home values jump more than $150,000 between 2000 and 2016, according to the most recent data from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Between 2006 and 2016, the number of adults age 65 and older, who were sharing their homes with nonfamily members grew by 87%, from 470,000 to 879,000, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.

Over the past few years, homeowners redoubled their remodeling efforts, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.