By Brandon Kochkodin | Forbes
If there’s one thing everyone agrees on, it’s that housing is unaffordable. Case in point: the National Association of Home Builders said in March that 60% of U.S. households can’t afford a $300,000 home at a time when the median price is now well above $400,000. For most families, the math simply doesn’t work.
There are a lot of reasons why. Zoning rules make it hard to build. Lumber and concrete cost more. Builders can’t hire enough workers. Mortgage rates are high, and many existing owners are locked into loans at half today’s going rate. All of this keeps supply low. According to realtor.com, the number of monthly active listings nationwide only climbed back above one million in May. Before the pandemic, that figure hadn’t dipped below that level since at least 2016.
