Achieving the American dream of homeownership has never cost so much.
In a new study published this month by Harvard University’s Joint Center of Housing Studies, researchers reveal and further confirm a number of dark truths about the current state of residential real estate in the United States.
For one thing, the cost burden of housing has reached a record high, for renters as well as homeowners. Between 2019 and 2022, two million more renter households across the nation — 22.4 million in all — have needed to spend over 30% of their income on housing and utilities.
“Rents have been rising faster than incomes for decades,” Alexander Hermann, Senior Research Associate at the Center, said in a press release about the report’s findings. “However, the pandemic-era rent surge produced an unprecedented affordability crisis that continues.”
The state of affairs is not so much better for homeowners, whose cost-burdened ranks grew by three million (to a total of 19.7 million) between 2019 to 2022. The majority of this increase impacted households making less than $30,000 annually.
Adding significantly to the burden for homeowners is the fact that insurance premiums and property taxes are both on the rise.
Other key findings of the report included the well-reported fact that high home prices and mortgage rates have kept homeownership out of reach for many would-be first-time homebuyers.
Entitled “The State of The Nation’s Housing 2024,” the report also found that the rental market has recently been slightly softened by a surge in new multifamily units.
As well, it noted that homelessness has also reached record highs: “As housing costs have risen, so has the number of people experiencing homelessness, reaching a record-high 653,100 people in 2023,” the report states, a situation that can be partially explained by the migrant crisis as well as the “end of pandemic protections, high rents, and the already meager housing safety net.”