7 ms·

From 1950 to 2008 the USA built ~25 million homes per (edit, not year) decade. From 2008 to 2018 it was about 7 million. In recent years building rates have mos

From 1950 to 2008 the USA built ~25 million homes per (edit, not year) decade. From 2008 to 2018 it was about 7 million. In recent years building rates have mostly recovered but there's still that gap in production combined with everything else the last handful of years. This isn't to discount the shift of ownership from human persons to corporate persons, that's a factor too. But just numbers of available houses versus population plays a role.

cma 4y ago
ChatGPT numbers? That would be 1.45 billion homes from 1950-2008.
- superkuh 4y ago
  *edit*: I see what I did, the plot I give numbers from is houses per decade. Not per year. Sorry about that. You can confirm the values are still real by comparing the simple plot (via: statista.com, http://a.superkuh.com/USA-number-of-homes-built-between-1900-and-2019.jpg http://a.superkuh.com/USA-number-of-homes-built-between-1900...) to the https://www.census.gov/construction/nrc/historical_data/index.html https://www.census.gov/construction/nrc/historical_data/inde... numbers. Thanks for pointing out what should have been an obvious error. Yikes.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
danielmarkbruce 4y ago
This is important and few seem to look at the simple supply/demand. It explains the housing crises in 06/07/08 and the subsequent situation too.
- paul7986 4y ago
  Yes and with supply not meeting demand at least here in York county pa and Baltimore county md.. bidding wars just started to be the norm again and prices are increasing. I bid on a 200k home (a real fixer upper to flip in two years after living in it & remodeling it) last weekend it had 20 bids and I lost out to an all cash offer(supposedly per my real estate agent). That same weekend a 40 year old log cabin ($430k) had an open house where 30 showed up and it was sold within 8 hours. Up until this month prices in this market were declining and homes sitting on the market for weeks to a month or more with lots of price drops. It's weird spring comes around with interest rates just as high and we are back to bidding war frenzy that was 2021/half of 2022.
- testrtt3222 4y ago
  We don't know if that is the primary cause though. The US population was growing at a quicker rate for much of it's history, and that population was more rural, and a number of other reasons we can't rely solely on historical data for our predictions of current behavior. With a closer to zero population growth rate and a more urbanized population we would expect there to be fewer houses built. Additionally, the pure supply and demand argument is insufficient because it does not explain why we have failed to create the additional supply to meet the demand. In a pure sandboxed supply/demand analysis with no other factors, we would expect to see supply increase as demand increases since in theory it means building homes is more profitable. The high school version of supply/demand is that they balance eachother eventually and the timeframe over which that happens is influenced by the elasticity in price of the good in question. Something about how the housing market functions has changed in some locations.
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    location, location, location. Much of the housing price increase has occurred in areas that are doing well economically, but have more or less maxed out the building density currently legally allowed by zoning. today you could build so many houses in Detroit and yet that wouldn't really ease the housing crisis in a place like the Bay. there is also, at least anecdotally, a shortage of skilled tradespeople across construction in general. post-2007 basically reduced the incoming pipeline to zero, and so now there is this missing labor cohort that would be really useful right now.
    - testrtt3222 4y ago
      Yep I agree that a large contributing factor in all of this has to do with location. The shortage of skilled labor is another instance where we need to ask why supply is not meeting demand. I think in the case of the supply of skilled construction workers it is not difficult to come up with a plausible explanation that doesn't require any malicious actors. Anyway, I'm not really trying to make a political point or give everybody my own pet theories as to how this happened. I'm mostly just trying to make the point that the way this issue is generally discussed in the media is economically illiterate at a pretty fundamental level.The observation in the media that supply is not meeting demand is worthless on account of that not being a meaningful statement.
pzo 4y ago
So in those 7 decades there has been build 175 million houses. Population of usa is around 350 million. Most people probsbly also not living alone and some houses that were build before 1950 probsbly still are in use just maybe modernized. Not familiar with USA market but wondering: Are current houses just more fragile and fell apart within 50 years?
- irrational 4y ago
  How many of those homes are second/third homes? There are a lot of old abandoned homes. I would never live in a home built before 1978. Almost certainly that home is full of lead-based paint and asbestos.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Eh. I live in a house built in the 1820s. Older houses are pretty common in New England. So what so long as things are covered up.
  - KerrAvon 4y ago
    You don’t have a choice in some areas, like the south SF bay (unless you are a multimillionaire). The sources of asbestos are well known and they can be removed cleanly and safely, and lead paint should have been painted over by now with more than a few coats of modern paint — which you can safely touch and lick, if you like.
    - cool_dude85 4y ago
      Just remember to explain to your 2-year-old not to put any of the chips or flakes in their mouth and it's all good.
      - BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
        Presumably you’d baby proof your home and would address any spots where the paint is flaking or chipping off the wall. Especially if you knew it was an older home. Honestly unless the lead paint is the topmost layer, or they put so many coats of regular paint on that it’s falling off the wall, the actual risk of a toddler encountering and then consuming the paint chips is shockingly low.
hayst4ck 4y ago
If home prices are going up, that means that demand exceeds supply. If home prices are going up everywhere that means demand is exceeding supply everywhere. If homes are a good monetary investment, that means home prices are going up, which means supply is not keeping pace with demand. If home prices are going up at a rate faster than wages, then they are becoming more expensive for our children. Not in a round-a-bout way, but in a direct causal relationship way. Homes can either be affordable or an investment, not both. If homes are to be affordable that means more need to be built.
- htag 4y ago
  > If homes are to be affordable that means more need to be built. Try pricing what it would take to buy a plot of land and build a home on it. In some places there are very expensive local regulations that must be satisfied. However, just the base value of some land with utility access, physical materials, and labor to assemble the home is "unaffordable." If the difference between the cost to produce a home and the sale value of the home was larger than there would be more home builders. If reducing the cost of housing is important to you than you should focus on ways to reduce the cost of producing homes.
  - drewrbaker 4y ago
    In 2019 I purchased land in Mt Washington, about 15mins outside downtown Los Angeles for $200k. My father is a builder back home in Australia so we know more about building that most. Even the after 3+ years, we finally received permits. The city is making us widen the road ($75k), extend a water main 12 feet ($75k), move 3 power poles (can’t get LADWP to tell us what that’s going to cost yet as they have to design it) and install a septic system. We are going to go all electric so we don’t have to run gas lines. The amount of bureaucracy is insane. Often times we have been the go between for different departments of city that have offices in the same building as each other. They all point the finger at each other. Can’t get answers to the power pole questions from LA DWP without Bureau of Street Lighting, Bureau of street lighting won’t do anything with out LA DWP etc… it’s madness. House will be 3200sqft, very nice with a pool but lots of value engineering (thanks to my dad). Construction budget is $2m. Will be getting a construction loan. Requires monthly income of $35k combined. Lucky I’m doing this with my twin brother, so we might just be able to afford it, but currently can not due to interest rate rises since we started. Swinging big. Bank appraised finished project at $3.5m. My take away from the whole process is that LA infrastructure is terrible, and the city has effectively made it impossible for new construction by family’s. LA DWP single handedly cost us a year in permitting and its incentives are just so not aligned with home owners. My dream is we can go solar and batteries and tell them to get lost. I now have a real respect for what Starlink is doing. Down with the entrenched utilities!!! You have to be rich to build a house in LA. Renovation is the only real option for individuals. Which just drives up house prices. New houses built is the only way out I think, and the government seems to only be making it harder.
blurbleblurble 4y ago
There are ~30 vacant homes per homeless person in the US. Tell me how that makes any sense.
- almost_usual 4y ago
  People would rather be homeless in a temperate climate than live in a dilapidated building in the rust belt?
  - blurbleblurble 4y ago
    I hear your point, and I wonder what the stats are on livability of these vacant homes. Cause I bet the other side of the spectrum is true too: luxury units that just sit there because the price point is so high. But beyond that, housing as investment property alienates people from the natural reward of caring for housing. We ought to be leaving into and communicating peoples' natural desire to make home livable. Instead we rip people from it, we punish people by forcing them to switch apartments when they're perfectly happy. So many people effectively live in in slow motion life long exile.
- justrealist 4y ago
  Taking a mentally ill fentanyl addict from San Francisco and dropping them in a condemned house in Scranton PA is not actually going to solve the problems you think it will.
  - notch898a 4y ago
    It would save a lot of money on demolition though. The plumbing, cabinets, appliances, doors, ducting, and everything not fixed to the frame would get removed for free and it would be very easy to bulldoze after the house catches fire from people trying to stay warm inside without paying a utility bill.
  - LoganDark 4y ago
    > a mentally ill fentanyl addict In a lot of cases they wouldn't have become mentally ill or a fentanyl addict if they weren't homeless. Yes, addiction drives tons of people into homelessness, but homelessness can also cause addiction since a homeless life kinda sucks.
medion 4y ago
Would be interesting to see how different the costs and difficulties compare to the prior building boom. The red tape involved in building today is off the charts - prior generations had a much easier time building houses.
- ChancyChance 4y ago
  And old homes are shit. Terrible plumbing. Terrible electrical. Terrible water. Terrible energy efficiency. Terrible seismic structural reinforcement. Regulations exist to mitigate tragedies.
gigatexal 4y ago
I don’t think the solution should be homes aka a scale out solution. It should be to go vertical for higher density. Apartments serve the most people and the barriers to entry are much lower than a mortgage.
jiggywiggy 4y ago
Hmmm it might not have anything with to do with the massive money printing and forced low interest rates of the last decades...? Its not only the us dealing with this. In many Western countries a large part of the population has been incentivised by both tax cuts and monetary policy to own property that it's become very hard for governments to change those policies to again make houses affordable without huge cuts of the wealth of their middle-class.

cma 4y ago

ChatGPT numbers? That would be 1.45 billion homes from 1950-2008.

superkuh 4y ago
*edit*: I see what I did, the plot I give numbers from is houses per decade. Not per year. Sorry about that. You can confirm the values are still real by comparing the simple plot (via: statista.com, http://a.superkuh.com/USA-number-of-homes-built-between-1900-and-2019.jpg http://a.superkuh.com/USA-number-of-homes-built-between-1900...) to the https://www.census.gov/construction/nrc/historical_data/index.html https://www.census.gov/construction/nrc/historical_data/inde... numbers. Thanks for pointing out what should have been an obvious error. Yikes.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

danielmarkbruce 4y ago

This is important and few seem to look at the simple supply/demand. It explains the housing crises in 06/07/08 and the subsequent situation too.

paul7986 4y ago
Yes and with supply not meeting demand at least here in York county pa and Baltimore county md.. bidding wars just started to be the norm again and prices are increasing. I bid on a 200k home (a real fixer upper to flip in two years after living in it & remodeling it) last weekend it had 20 bids and I lost out to an all cash offer(supposedly per my real estate agent). That same weekend a 40 year old log cabin ($430k) had an open house where 30 showed up and it was sold within 8 hours. Up until this month prices in this market were declining and homes sitting on the market for weeks to a month or more with lots of price drops. It's weird spring comes around with interest rates just as high and we are back to bidding war frenzy that was 2021/half of 2022.
testrtt3222 4y ago
We don't know if that is the primary cause though. The US population was growing at a quicker rate for much of it's history, and that population was more rural, and a number of other reasons we can't rely solely on historical data for our predictions of current behavior. With a closer to zero population growth rate and a more urbanized population we would expect there to be fewer houses built. Additionally, the pure supply and demand argument is insufficient because it does not explain why we have failed to create the additional supply to meet the demand. In a pure sandboxed supply/demand analysis with no other factors, we would expect to see supply increase as demand increases since in theory it means building homes is more profitable. The high school version of supply/demand is that they balance eachother eventually and the timeframe over which that happens is influenced by the elasticity in price of the good in question. Something about how the housing market functions has changed in some locations.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  location, location, location. Much of the housing price increase has occurred in areas that are doing well economically, but have more or less maxed out the building density currently legally allowed by zoning. today you could build so many houses in Detroit and yet that wouldn't really ease the housing crisis in a place like the Bay. there is also, at least anecdotally, a shortage of skilled tradespeople across construction in general. post-2007 basically reduced the incoming pipeline to zero, and so now there is this missing labor cohort that would be really useful right now.
  - testrtt3222 4y ago
    Yep I agree that a large contributing factor in all of this has to do with location. The shortage of skilled labor is another instance where we need to ask why supply is not meeting demand. I think in the case of the supply of skilled construction workers it is not difficult to come up with a plausible explanation that doesn't require any malicious actors. Anyway, I'm not really trying to make a political point or give everybody my own pet theories as to how this happened. I'm mostly just trying to make the point that the way this issue is generally discussed in the media is economically illiterate at a pretty fundamental level.The observation in the media that supply is not meeting demand is worthless on account of that not being a meaningful statement.

pzo 4y ago

So in those 7 decades there has been build 175 million houses. Population of usa is around 350 million. Most people probsbly also not living alone and some houses that were build before 1950 probsbly still are in use just maybe modernized. Not familiar with USA market but wondering: Are current houses just more fragile and fell apart within 50 years?

irrational 4y ago
How many of those homes are second/third homes? There are a lot of old abandoned homes. I would never live in a home built before 1978. Almost certainly that home is full of lead-based paint and asbestos.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Eh. I live in a house built in the 1820s. Older houses are pretty common in New England. So what so long as things are covered up.
- KerrAvon 4y ago
  You don’t have a choice in some areas, like the south SF bay (unless you are a multimillionaire). The sources of asbestos are well known and they can be removed cleanly and safely, and lead paint should have been painted over by now with more than a few coats of modern paint — which you can safely touch and lick, if you like.
  - cool_dude85 4y ago
    Just remember to explain to your 2-year-old not to put any of the chips or flakes in their mouth and it's all good.
    - BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
      Presumably you’d baby proof your home and would address any spots where the paint is flaking or chipping off the wall. Especially if you knew it was an older home. Honestly unless the lead paint is the topmost layer, or they put so many coats of regular paint on that it’s falling off the wall, the actual risk of a toddler encountering and then consuming the paint chips is shockingly low.

hayst4ck 4y ago

If home prices are going up, that means that demand exceeds supply. If home prices are going up everywhere that means demand is exceeding supply everywhere. If homes are a good monetary investment, that means home prices are going up, which means supply is not keeping pace with demand. If home prices are going up at a rate faster than wages, then they are becoming more expensive for our children. Not in a round-a-bout way, but in a direct causal relationship way. Homes can either be affordable or an investment, not both. If homes are to be affordable that means more need to be built.

htag 4y ago
> If homes are to be affordable that means more need to be built. Try pricing what it would take to buy a plot of land and build a home on it. In some places there are very expensive local regulations that must be satisfied. However, just the base value of some land with utility access, physical materials, and labor to assemble the home is "unaffordable." If the difference between the cost to produce a home and the sale value of the home was larger than there would be more home builders. If reducing the cost of housing is important to you than you should focus on ways to reduce the cost of producing homes.
- drewrbaker 4y ago
  In 2019 I purchased land in Mt Washington, about 15mins outside downtown Los Angeles for $200k. My father is a builder back home in Australia so we know more about building that most. Even the after 3+ years, we finally received permits. The city is making us widen the road ($75k), extend a water main 12 feet ($75k), move 3 power poles (can’t get LADWP to tell us what that’s going to cost yet as they have to design it) and install a septic system. We are going to go all electric so we don’t have to run gas lines. The amount of bureaucracy is insane. Often times we have been the go between for different departments of city that have offices in the same building as each other. They all point the finger at each other. Can’t get answers to the power pole questions from LA DWP without Bureau of Street Lighting, Bureau of street lighting won’t do anything with out LA DWP etc… it’s madness. House will be 3200sqft, very nice with a pool but lots of value engineering (thanks to my dad). Construction budget is $2m. Will be getting a construction loan. Requires monthly income of $35k combined. Lucky I’m doing this with my twin brother, so we might just be able to afford it, but currently can not due to interest rate rises since we started. Swinging big. Bank appraised finished project at $3.5m. My take away from the whole process is that LA infrastructure is terrible, and the city has effectively made it impossible for new construction by family’s. LA DWP single handedly cost us a year in permitting and its incentives are just so not aligned with home owners. My dream is we can go solar and batteries and tell them to get lost. I now have a real respect for what Starlink is doing. Down with the entrenched utilities!!! You have to be rich to build a house in LA. Renovation is the only real option for individuals. Which just drives up house prices. New houses built is the only way out I think, and the government seems to only be making it harder.

blurbleblurble 4y ago

There are ~30 vacant homes per homeless person in the US. Tell me how that makes any sense.

almost_usual 4y ago
People would rather be homeless in a temperate climate than live in a dilapidated building in the rust belt?
- blurbleblurble 4y ago
  I hear your point, and I wonder what the stats are on livability of these vacant homes. Cause I bet the other side of the spectrum is true too: luxury units that just sit there because the price point is so high. But beyond that, housing as investment property alienates people from the natural reward of caring for housing. We ought to be leaving into and communicating peoples' natural desire to make home livable. Instead we rip people from it, we punish people by forcing them to switch apartments when they're perfectly happy. So many people effectively live in in slow motion life long exile.
justrealist 4y ago
Taking a mentally ill fentanyl addict from San Francisco and dropping them in a condemned house in Scranton PA is not actually going to solve the problems you think it will.
- notch898a 4y ago
  It would save a lot of money on demolition though. The plumbing, cabinets, appliances, doors, ducting, and everything not fixed to the frame would get removed for free and it would be very easy to bulldoze after the house catches fire from people trying to stay warm inside without paying a utility bill.
- LoganDark 4y ago
  > a mentally ill fentanyl addict In a lot of cases they wouldn't have become mentally ill or a fentanyl addict if they weren't homeless. Yes, addiction drives tons of people into homelessness, but homelessness can also cause addiction since a homeless life kinda sucks.

medion 4y ago

Would be interesting to see how different the costs and difficulties compare to the prior building boom. The red tape involved in building today is off the charts - prior generations had a much easier time building houses.

ChancyChance 4y ago
And old homes are shit. Terrible plumbing. Terrible electrical. Terrible water. Terrible energy efficiency. Terrible seismic structural reinforcement. Regulations exist to mitigate tragedies.

gigatexal 4y ago

I don’t think the solution should be homes aka a scale out solution. It should be to go vertical for higher density. Apartments serve the most people and the barriers to entry are much lower than a mortgage.

jiggywiggy 4y ago

Hmmm it might not have anything with to do with the massive money printing and forced low interest rates of the last decades...? Its not only the us dealing with this. In many Western countries a large part of the population has been incentivised by both tax cuts and monetary policy to own property that it's become very hard for governments to change those policies to again make houses affordable without huge cuts of the wealth of their middle-class.