In the Media

However, there are still a lot of Americans who can't afford to move because of the rising cost of mortgages, rents, and the ongoing pandemic, said Riordan Frost, a research analyst at the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. "There's an assumption that most Americans have figured it all out, but that's totally not the case," said Frost, who's written extensively about where Americans have moved during the pandemic.

“The rising costs of labor and construction materials, difficulty retaining contractors, and climbing interest rates could discourage owners from undertaking new or larger remodeling projects,” said Abbe Will, associate project director of the Remodeling Futures Program at JCHS.

By the end of 2021, the number of renter households increased by about 870,000 compared with the first quarter of 2020, according to a report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. The overall rental vacancy rate had dropped to the lowest level since the mid-1980s.

Rents nearly doubled in many major cities over the decade, despite slow wage growth that often failed to meet the rising cost of housing. That put renters in a financial vise, with the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard reporting that nearly half paid rent equal to 30% or more of their income in 2019.

Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies reports the vacancy rate has reached a 40-year low. Some share of that reflects a rebound from 2020’s steep declines—but most does not.

US cities are also seeing “absolutely wild increases in rents right now,” said Whitney Airgood-Obrycki, a research associate and author at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS), which just released a report on the country’s surging rental market.

Carlos Martín, investigador del centro para estudios de vivienda en la Universidad de Harvard, explicó que esta situación se debe a un desequilibrio en la oferta y demanda de casas en muchos lugares del país.

A recent report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University found that there were nearly 900,000 more people renting in late 2021 than there were in early 2020. Meanwhile, the current vacancy rate is just under 6% — the lowest it’s been since the 1980s.

In a report the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies released Tuesday, writer Whitney Airgood-Obrycki noted that “higher-quality apartments led the way” on price increases.

Also, the demand is so steep that the United States' overall rental vacancy rate dropped to just 5.8% – the lowest since the mid-1980s, according to a new report by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.