In the Media

In the 2010s, we heard a lot about young people opting for urban areas, notes Riordan Frost, a senior research analyst at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. But now, he says, “more Millennials are suburbanizing than are not.”

Utah's home prices started rising even before the pandemic, then spiked amid a crush of remote work newcomers. The state's median home price has skyrocketed to $506,000, putting it out of reach for 87% of renters. That makes it one of the least affordable housing markets in a country where a record share of people struggle with the high cost of renting and buying.

Manufactured homes cost buyers up to two-thirds less than building comparable-sized single-family homes with your traditional methods. And this comes from Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Mortgage rates have moderated in recent months, but they are still roughly twice where they were before the pandemic. Inventories have begun to grow, but prices are still up 60% since 2019, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. The U.S. single-family median home price of $412,500 at the end of 2024 was five times the median household income, signaling an affordability crisis that the Harvard researchers deemed “shocking.”

At today’s prices, a family would need to earn $126,700 a year to afford monthly payments on an average home purchased in 2024, up from $79,300 annually in 2021, according to a report from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Alexander Hermann at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies said where you live also makes a big difference. “Austin's the poster child for rents declining right now, right,” Hermann said. “And there are other markets, especially in the South, but also in the West, where you see rent declines. But every single market in the Northeast and Midwest continue to see their rents rise.”

Domestic migration—moving from one state to another—has hit a historic low. According to the latest housing report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, just 8.3-percent of households relocated in the past year. That’s not only the lowest rate since the 1970s, it’s a sign of a broader slowdown in how Americans are reshaping the map.

Despite nationwide, bipartisan skepticism of government and tax increases, Seattle’s voters showed that in light of a severe affordability crisis, a new role for the public sector and a new, dedicated fiscal revenue stream for housing were not only necessary, but possible.

“The signals are starting to happen now, and we're starting to see limited development because of the better understanding of what the risks are,” said Carlos Martín, director of the Remodeling Futures Program at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. “It's really a fine-tooth comb that you have to look through, in terms of all the available land.”

Ignoring for a moment the significant pain that will be inflicted on all tenants while enacting this strategy of building housing that the majority of renters do not want, recent research from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies found that the benefits of the construction of new apartments for rent does not find its way down to help those who need affordable rents. Given previous rent inflation, it is highly unlikely rents will fall here in any meaningful way, if at all.