The U.S. has a housing shortage. The video traces home-building trends from 1960 through the 2020s, showing how the 2008 crisis and Covid pandemic disrupted construction and left inventory depleted.
Why are we just so short on new homes? I chalk it up to two main events, the 2008 housing crisis and the 2020 Covid home buying years. If we take a step back from 1960 through the 2000s decade, every single decade, we've built between 11 and 18 million new homes across the country. And then 2008 happened. The housing market just melted down. And for new families buying a home, why would you pay full price with a builder when you could buy one for half price? That was foreclosed on, so builders weren't needed as much. And then the 2010 decade, there was only 6.8 million new homes built way, way short on inventory. Those families that went into foreclos go away forever. They just had to wait a few years before they could qualify again. So they came flooding back in the market later on in the 2010s, and that, you know, was a really bad bath problem for inventory. A lot of people needing a house, not enough built. And then 2020 happened. Rates hit all time, record lows. Everybody bought up remaining inventory in the last five years. On average, each year there's 1.8 million new households or families formed that need a home. And we're only building 1.45 million homes per year. So that's still a bad math problem. We were way short, and we're not catching up. We need new homes.
