The nation’s number of occupied homes grew by 3.9 percent between 2019 and 2021, representing 4.7 million units of new homes, according to table B25032 of the American Community Survey. More than 98.5 percent of those new units were owner occupied, while rental housing grew by just 0.2 percent or less than 1.5 percent of total new homes.
More than three-fourths of new homes were single-family detached homes, reflecting the preferences of most (about 80 percent) Americans for such homes. Another 16 percent were single-family attached (row houses), while only 12 percent were multifamily.
Overall, homeownership grew from 64.2 percent of 64.1 percent of occupied homes to 65.4 percent. This seems like a large leap considering that the nation was in a recession for much of the period, but it shows that the pandemic persuaded many people to give up rental and multifamily housing for owned, single-family housing. Or, more likely, the increase in telecommuting that resulted from the pandemic allowed more people to give up rental and multifamily housing in favor of owned, single-family housing.
This is the opposite, of course, of what many cities have been trying to get people to do. For largely irrational reasons, many regions have tried to encourage more people to live in multifamily housing, which usually means more people renting.
The pandemic hasn’t helped those who have this goal. California recently passed a law encouraging developers to tear down single-family homes and replace them with multifamily. Yet in San Francisco, which has some of the most expensive and densest housing in the country, single-family detached homes grew by 1,214; single-family attached homes (row houses) grew by 4,566, and multifamily homes declined by 20,536. (This reflects occupied numbers; the actual number of multifamily housing units may not have declined.)
Similar trends can be seen in Los Angeles and San Jose, as well as in the San Francisco and San Jose urban areas as a whole: growth in both kinds of single-family, shrinkage in multifamily. (The Los Angeles urban area saw a growth in all kinds of housing.) Even Newport Beach and Palo Alto, the two cities in the country where the Census Bureau reports the median home price is more than $2 million, occupied single-family housing grew while occupied multifamily housing declined.
Overall, the state of California gained 293,000 units of single-family homes and lost 7,000 units of multifamily homes. Oregon also saw a growth in single-family and a decline in multifamily despite efforts by many cities in the state to promote multifamily housing. Washington managed to gain 5,000 units of multifamily (against almost 97,000 single-family), but the Seattle urban area, which has been the most aggressive promoter of multifamily in the state, lost 5,400 units of multifamily while gaining more than 38,000 single-family homes.
Since most multifamily is rented and most single-family is owned, it isn’t surprising that occupied rental units also declined in most places that saw a decline in multifamily housing.
In Houston, the city with the closest to a true free market in housing in the country, all housing types grew. But single-family detached homes grew by 5.7 percent while multifamily grew by 4.8 percent. In the Houston urban area, single-family detached grew by 5.4 percent while multifamily grew by 2.9 percent.
The message of all of this is that states, regions, and cities that are fighting people’s desires to own and live in single-family homes are failing, though they are inflicting pain on people by increasing the cost of housing. In a recent article in the Colorado Gazette, I noted that the war on the automobile is lost and should end; in the same way, the war on single-family homes (sometimes called the war on the suburbs) should also cease.
I’ve posted a spreadsheet with housing data for the nation, states, counties, cities, and urban areas for both 2021 and 2019. Columns B through X are 2021 data; columns BB through BX are 2019 data. Columns AA through AD have percentages of owner-occupied, renter-occupied, single-family detached, single-family attached, and multifamily for 2021 while the same percentages for 2019 are in columns CA through DC. Columns AK through AP show numeric changes between 2019 and 2021 while AQ through AV show percent changes.
Data for the United States are in row 2; the states (and DC and Puerto Rico) are in rows 3 through 54; counties are rows 55 through 895; cities are rows 896 through 1519; and urban areas are rows 1520 through 1944. The file has counties and cities sorted by state; if you want to resort, you can sort the entire file by name and then resort by type of geography (column Z) and resort cities and counties by state (column Y).
A few counties, cities, or urban areas are in the 2021 data set but not 2019 or vice versa; in the former case, changes will appear as 100 percent. Don’t make too many changes to the 2019 data in columns BA through BX as the comparisons in columns AK through AV depend on those numbers.
splitting a McMansion that doesnt sell into two affordable houses is good start. The McMansion is obsolete…they cost 1000 a month to heat and power they have poor insulation. They cook up in summer and roast in the winter….they echo like museums.
Designer marianne cusato presented..for Build magazine
The New Economy Home 1.0
is designed to be efficient to both build and to maintain over time. The small and simple footprint is based on standard dimensional lumber to minimize cutting on site. Plumbing fixtures are grouped in centralized locations to simplify plumbing installation and reduce consumption. The building envelope and construction details merge the latest technologies in greener building with common sense details that maximize the value of sun and water, while minimizing the load they place on the mechanical systems. Every set of plans comes with a full materials list and product specifications.
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2010/10/17/magazine/17KeySmallHouse/17KeySmallHouse-t_CA0-articleLarge.jpg
The 2.0 project called “project Gable side” At around 1,700 square feet, it was the size of the average American home built in 1980. Since then, new houses have on average grown by more than 40 percent, as dens have expanded into great rooms, and tubs and sinks have multiplied. “Houses got too big, because people were chasing investment gains and there was cheap money, and the industry responded by building houses that were too large. When the housing market sank said super-homes became financial tombs.
I like these New economy homes…… while density places a supposed burden on infrastructure, so does lack of density which leaves neighborhoods without sufficient revenue to pay for infrastructure. Every few decades infrastructure HAS to be completely replaced.
Reduce consumption of what?
There is nothing wrong with Mansionization. Like almost everything else in life, there is a proper time and place. Style is of extreme importance. Building Iranian mansions among craftsmen homes destroys the aesthetics of the neighborhood. Likewise a mansion which towers over homes are not appropriate.
Los Angeles needed extension mansionization in the Basin. The older homes, ca, 1910-1935, had no master bedrooms, were deficient in storage and bathrooms, and were not equipped for Virtual Presence (NOT virtual REALITY, that is something different) The more mansions in the Basin, the easier commute for those who want to work in DTLA or Century City. The worse possible thing to do was destroy any existing housing rather than improving it.
Offices and residences should be close to each other. Residences does not include apartments. I mean decent homes with yards. Mansionization would not have contributed to the homeless crisis. Densification is a social evil. Think of densification as the VD of urban life
This is a nice example of the Tyranny of the Left, dictating to people how large their homes should be.
When San Francisco gonna develop Treasure island.
you can build artificial islands for what it costs for the infrastructure of major highrise laden cities.
Nuclear powered dredging you can harvest 250 million cubic meters of muck and rock a year at minimal energy cost.
Beyond that, it’s being widely investigated the idea of floating cities on water.
The surge in housing demand is people who wanna live near the shore.
Just as a case of public works projects, islands would serve numerous purposes.
– parks/gardens in crowded urban areas.
– additional housing(Hong Kong, Jamaica, bermuda)
– purging muck and filtering water would restore estuary ecosystems. Chesapeake bay could enjoy blue, crystal clear waters again. Poplar Island is already being built from dredge spoil from widened ship channels. Digging up decades if surface muck….several feet thick you could build an island 500+ acres as wildlife, wetlands seasonal nesting birds.