The Affordability Crisis Continues for Millennials Despite New Builds

The upticks in overall builder confidence and building permits are reassuring signs that the housing market is going in the right direction for 2020. But we’re not out of the woods yet: Despite having a majority of housing production in areas with large concentrations of millennials, the pace is not keeping up with demand and affordability continues to be an issue. 

The majority of single-family and multifamily housing production in the nation is occurring in counties with the greatest concentration of millennials. However, in a warning sign that the housing affordability crisis persists and more construction is needed, the pace of housing production in areas with the greatest concentration of millennials lags the rest of the nation, according to the latest quarterly NAHB Home Building Geography Index (HBGI).

The third quarterly release of the HBGI sheds new light on the housing market by focusing on where millennials live. “Millennial counties” are defined as geographic areas where at least 26% of the population consists of this growing demographic group. These millennial counties are diverse, representing major metro areas including several California markets, Seattle, Portland, Boston and Washington, D.C., as well as more rural counties in places such as Ohio, Kansas and Missouri.

The HBGI found that those counties with elevated millennial shares account for 62% of the entire U.S. population. These counties also account for 59% of single-family home building nationwide.

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