Realtor.com®: U.S. Housing Supply Short 7.2 Million Homes
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Feb. 27, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- While the number of homes for sale has been recovering from pandemic-era lows thanks to a surge of new construction, a new Realtor.com® analysis found that the market is still missing up to 7.2 million homes, the result of more than a decade of underbuilding relative to population growth.
- "The U.S. is in a long-term housing shortage with the construction of new homes failing to keep pace with a growing population.
- Household formation outpaces single-family home construction, despite uptick
In 2023, an additional 1.7 million households formed, resulting in a total of 17.2 million new households between 2012 and 2023. - Homebuilders started construction on 947,200 single-family homes and 472,700 multi-family homes in 2023, bringing the 2012 to 2023 overall housing starts total to 14.7 million homes, roughly 10 million of which were single-family.
- As household formations outpaced housing starts in 2023, the overall gap between household formations and total housing starts, including single- and multi-family homes, widened from 2.3 million housing units between 2012 and 2022 to 2.5 million units at the end of 2023.