By Jessica Boehm | Axios
For almost all of Phoenix’s history, our housing prices were below the national average, winning us a reputation of affordability.
That’s not the case anymore, and it hasn’t been since 2019.
Driving the news: Our affordability problem is simply a matter of supply and demand.
We have more people wanting to live here than we have housing units.
Why it matters: As more people move to the Valley, housing costs will continue to rise if supply doesn’t catch up quickly.
This will mostly impact medium- and low-wage residents — service workers, teachers and first responders — who can’t afford the rising costs.
Catch up fast: Home and apartment building all but stopped after the 2008 housing crash, according to Colliers researcher Thomas Brophy.
It restarted in 2016, then lulled again the next two years.
Meanwhile, more people started moving here.
By the time building started up in earnest in about 2019, the region was already playing catch-up.
