Housing construction

Apartment Construction Ramps Up to Meet New Demand
It's unclear if or when the supply of entry level rental housing options will catch up with the demand, but some cities are building quickly.

Leveraging Church Properties to Build Affordable Housing
As owners of valuable urban real estate, some churches are taking up the mandate to serve their community by using their vacant properties to provide housing for people being priced out of their homes.

U.S. Home Construction Costs Are Higher Than Ever
With demand soaring and materials in short supply, the cost of building a home has risen sharply in the last year.

Texas Metros Lead Residential Building Permit Activity in 2020; Atlanta, Phoenix Also in the Top 5
A new report quantifies the number of housing units in the development pipelines in metropolitan areas around the United States.

California's Fastest Growing City: Paradise
Paradise, California—devastated by the deadly Camp Fire of 2018—is attracting new and returning residents as the city rebuilds its housing stock.

Lumber Prices Spike; Housing Prices Follow
The cost of lumber has more than doubled in the past year, according to industry sources, adding more than $24,000 to the cost of a new home.

Record Number of Single-Family Rentals Reflect the Expensive U.S. Housing Market
Home builders are building a record number of single-family rentals, and young, modest-income households with children are more likely to live in those new homes.

Building Modular Housing Factories Near Areas With High Housing Costs
To improve housing costs and economic conditions at once, look to the locations of modular housing factories.

Affordable Housing Production Grinds to a Halt During Pandemic
Just when the nation needs a functional market for affordable housing, the industry that builds affordable housing supply has stopped functioning, like to many other parts of the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic.

New Homes Selling Like Hotcakes
New homes, located mostly on the fringe of developed areas, are selling at a torrid pace this summer.

Laying the Groundwork for Cheaper Multi-Family Housing Construction
The processes of clearing land, building foundations, and making space for parking are three of the most expensive components of the construction process. Zoning can help reduce the costs to deliver more affordable housing supply.

Homebuilders Aren't Keeping Pace With Millennial Demand
Places with a lot of Millennials are building homes, just not enough to keep pace with the large number of Millennials coming of homebuying age.

Not Enough Housing, Or Too Much of the Wrong Kind
Permits for new housing continue to lag despite a long economic boom. For coastal metros, it's a familiar story of job growth outpacing new construction. In some Sun Belt cities, sprawl is the bigger concern.

Behind America's Fixation on Big Houses
McMansion or not, the American home is a good 600 to 800 square feet larger than the average in most other countries. Possible reasons run the gamut from policy to culture to personal economics.

Jersey City Building More Apartment Than Manhattan
And other perhaps surprising data from the multi-family housing development industry.

Governor Calls for 1.3 Million New Homes in Southern California
Local governments in Southern California have chafed at a call from Governor Gavin Newsom for 1.3 million new homes over the next decade. The Southern California Association of Governments has proposed only 430,000.

Battle of the Bay: Oakland Ahead of San Francisco in Housing Construction
Call it a role reversal: Oakland is building far more apartments and housing units than San Francisco—a reversal of the history of development in the Bay Area.

A Call for Action as Construction Slows in California
An editorial by the Los Angeles Times calls for the state to remove barriers to housing shortage after a report finds declining numbers of residential permits around the state.

Doubt Cast on Induced Demand for Housing
Applied to roads, the theory of induced demand says new construction only brings out more users. But can something similar be said of housing? According to this research, the likely answer is no.

NYC Planning Head Defends Growth-Oriented Policies
Acknowledging anti-development sentiments currently simmering at an "all-time high," New York's planning director Marisa Lago defended de Blasio administration policies like mandatory inclusionary housing.
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