State of the Nation's Housing 2010

Housing research fans will be excited to hear that the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies released the State of the Nation's Housing 2010 today. The report, released annually, provides an assessment of the nation’s housing outlook and summarizes important trends in the economics and demographics of housing.  The report provides a useful analysis of several key housing trends.

Some trends and interesting facts from the 2010 report:

• Housing production grinds to a near-halt. Fewer single family homes were started in 2009 than in any year since World War II. Multifamily production dropped by 60% and manufactured housing placements dropped by 34%.

• Evidence that more people are doubling up?Even though the number of renters increased by 800,000 last year, the national rental vacancy rate rose to a new high of 10.6 percent last year - a record high.

• Yes, people are doubling up. Household growth appears to have slowed due to a marked drop in immigration, and some doubling up among economically stressed families.  

• More debt than value. Roughly one-quarter of American homeowners with mortgages were underwater on their loans as of the end of the first quarter of 2010. 

• Paying too much for housing. The share of cost-burdened households is on the rise, with 40.3 million households spending more than 30% of their incomes on housing in 2008. 18.6 million of these households spend more than half of their income on housing—up from 13.8 million in 2001.

• A bit of good news. Lower home prices and interest rates pushed mortgage payments on a newly-purchased median priced home (assuming a 10 percent down payment) down below 20 percent of the US median household income—to the lowest ratio on records dating back to 1971.

Check out the SON 2010 Key Facts. They are at least as interesting as the full-report and take a lot less time to read.