In the Media

This year's State of the Nation's Housing report, released earlier this week by the Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS) of Harvard University, found that the movement of Americans across the country has declined in 2024 all across the country, including in the states that are traditionally the most popular among movers.

The U.S. housing market is clouded with uncertainty, a new report by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University finds. Chris Herbert, the managing director of JCHS, joins to break down the data.

Despite one of the more substantial surges of new apartment construction in decades, the benefits of growing supply have not trickled down to the most cost-burdened renters in the US. That’s the conclusion of Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, which this week released its annual State of the Nation’s Housing Report, one of the most in-depth studies linking housing costs and renter incomes.

A new report from one of the nation’s premiere housing research groups confirms what many of us already know: residential real estate is pulling further away from ordinary Americans, becoming more expensive, less attainable, and increasingly stymying efforts to make a market that works for everyone. The State of the Nation’s Housing 2025, from the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, lays out the numbers in stark detail.

The housing affordability crisis that has been keeping the dream of homeownership out of reach for millions of Americans over the past few years is unlikely to ease "anytime soon," according to a new report by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. The State of the Nation's Housing 2025 found that sky-high home prices—which are still rising at the national level—historically elevated mortgage rates, and rising home insurance premiums and property taxes are still keeping Americans on the sidelines of the market, despite growing inventory.

In 2024, for the third straight year, the median size of a new single-family home in the U.S. has shrunk, to 2,150 square feet. That’s down from nearly 2,500 square feet back in 2013, and startlingly close to the roughly 2,100 square foot average seen in 2009 at the depth of the global financial crisis. It’s a downsizing that underscores just how hard it is for most people to afford to buy a home today, and the extent to which homebuilders are adjusting their offerings to meet demand. This telling figure comes from The State of the Nation’s Housing, an annual report just released by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

“Lower-income householders are often cash strapped,” said Sophia Wedeen, a senior research analyst with the Joint Center. “The fact that they’re investing so much less in dollars but spending more of their incomes is certainly reinforcing inequities in housing conditions and finances.” The calculations also considered race and ethnicity, household composition and other traits, but of the homeowner characteristics evaluated, Ms. Wedeen noted, income is a main driver of spending.

Economists consider the ratio of home prices to incomes to be a reliable indicator of the state of a housing market. Typically, a house-price-to-income ratio of three — a median household income of $100,000 and median home price of $300,000, for instance — is seen as healthy. In Greater Boston in 2023, that ratio was 6.3, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, more than double that healthy rate.

In the U.S., the number of households officially "burdened by rent" has hit another record high. As of 2023, more than 22 million renting households are spending more than 30% of their incomes on rent and utilities, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

U.S. home prices have far outpaced wages, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. The current median home price in the U.S. is more than $403,000, NAR data shows, while the Social Security Administration reports the national average wage index is about $66,600.