Archinect - News

On the disappearance of American starter homes

2022-09-26T15:38:00-04:00

The disappearance of such affordable homes is central to the American housing crisis. The nation has a deepening shortage of housing. But, more specifically, there isn’t enough of this housing: small, no-frills homes that would give a family new to the country or a young couple with student debt a foothold to build equity. [...] At the root is the math problem of putting — or keeping — a low-cost home on increasingly pricey land.

America has a long history of gradually siphoning away architecture made for predominantly middle-class people (think pre-war buildings in Manhattan or Levittown tract housing on Long Island) and is now simply under-delivering what could otherwise be an equalizing force as a result of prevailing factors like intimidating zoning regulations, prohibitive materials costs, and nationwide lack of available new land.

Related on Archinect: Why is America obsessed with huge homes?

Changes in demand also meant the 2010s were curtains for the possibility of building a home at less than $100,000. Today’s market has gravitated towards so-called "missing middle" construction as historical notions of family composition themselves come into question. This means the future of housing might look closer to Adam Neumann's Flow vision or BIG's Nabr initiative than it does to the archetypal American suburb of the 1950s.

As the Times reports, its cause can also be attributed to the overburdening of bui...

June's NAHB/Wells Fargo HMI shows builder pessimism at an all-time high

2022-06-21T08:30:00-04:00

A new poll conducted by the National Association of Home Builders shows builder confidence in the market for new single-family homes is at its lowest level after six straight months of decline. The poll measures builder perceptions of current and future single-family home sales, and the traffic of prospective buyers. All three categories posted declines in the latest monthly data with buyer traffic falling most sharply, a sign that homebuyers — especially first-time ones — are giving up.

The now-familiar cocktail of increasingly higher interest rates and home prices is once again causing headaches for contractors looking to fill America’s shortage of 4 million homes. The NAHB has been pushing the Biden Administration to take action on the supply-side of the problem since last year, and now says that a 19% increase in the average cost of construction materials will require even further measures be taken in the form of jobs training, tariff rollbacks, and a ban on Russian timber in the hopes of combatting the nationwide problem.

The group's new poll indicates an atmosphere of waned confidence in an industry beset by labor shortages and a string of business failures for the past two years. All three categories of measure reported percentage point decreases of 1 (sales conditions), 2 (expectations), and 5, a record for buyer traffic, which has fallen belo...

Trump Administration poised to reshape government's role in Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac

2019-08-30T19:15:00-04:00

The Trump administration and lawmakers in both parties generally don’t believe the government should be running in effect two enormous financial companies. Administration officials want to shrink the government’s involvement and return housing finance to a privately run system.

The Wall Street Journal takes a look at how (and why) the Trump Administration is looking to change the federal government's role in overseeing aspects of the nation's mortgage securities market.

According to WSJ, the two government-sponsored entities secure half of the nation’s $10 trillion mortgage market.

Single women emerge as second-strongest group of homebuyers

2016-02-24T13:48:00-05:00

It's hard to remember that just a few decades ago it was difficult, if not impossible, for a woman alone to take out a mortgage. Federal legislation changed that. And yet, it's still surprising to learn how dominant single women have become in the housing market today: Their share is second only to married couples, and twice that of single men.

The return of redlining: how the mortgage industry is threatening Detroit's rejuvenation

2015-12-07T13:04:00-05:00

In Detroit, there were 3,500 sales of single-family homes in 2014. Only 462 of them received a mortgage. That means that nearly 87 percent of sales were in cash — and that doesn’t include homes sold in foreclosure auction. Comparatively, the overall metro area saw only 53 percent in cash sales the same year. Nationwide, it was 43 percent. “The number one issue that we, in the end, identified in Detroit is that it’s incredibly hard for homebuyers to get a mortgage right now,” say Svenja Gudell..

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