In the Media

Home prices went up by double digits in 85 of the 100 largest metro areas, creating wealth that propped up existing owners, said Daniel McCue, a senior research associate at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

According to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, the pandemic year has been a "boon" for the home remodeling market, with a projected market spending of $433 billion in 2021.

Renter households are more likely than owner households to have a member with a disability, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.

It’s like sedimentary rock,” says Chris Herbert, the managing director of the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. “There’s never really been a time when we sat down and said, ‘Let’s think about a coherent U.S. housing policy.’”

Home improvement and repair spending grew by nearly 3% to $420 billion in 2020, per a recent study by Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies.

An April 15 forecast from the Remodeling Futures Program at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University showed that spending on renovation and repairs is expected to increase at rates higher than year-ago levels through the end of 2021.

Daniel McCue, a senior research associate at the Center, said there is evidence that as the pandemic eased in late summer and early fall of 2020, many young adults moved out.

Kermit Baker, a senior research fellow at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, says setbacks in renovations are being fueled by global factors. ”The cost of lumber has tripled over the last three months …We’re seeing a lot of markets that are slowed down by fundamental problems in the supply chain.”

Monthly housing costs are much lower for single-family rentals compared with single-family home purchases, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, and the typical income of families living in those rentals is more modest as well.

In 2020, as the U.S. economy fell by 3.5 percent, spending on home repairs and improvements rose more than 3 percent, to nearly $420 billion, according to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.