For a lot of people, the math on buying a home just doesn’t really work right now. Maybe that’s how it feels for you too. You look at the cost of buying. Then you look at the cost of childcare. And it starts to feel like you have to choose one or the other. But […]
When Buying a Home Feels Out of Reach, Some Families Do This Instead Read More »
A battle has brewed over residential lot sizes in Texas after Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law last year reducing them in the state’s biggest cities. Since the law didn’t apply statewide, Montgomery County, which abuts Houston, is trying again to increase its lot sizes after doing so last March. County planners say the increase
Minimum residential lot size dispute heats up in a Texas county Read More »
New York City is increasing housing density, though much of the early progress stems from state law changes and rezonings that predate Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration. Those moves are now starting to show up in steel and concrete, even as Mamdani advances his own housing agenda. The clearest example is in Midtown South. City officials
NYC builds taller housing again, as state, city law reset the stage Read More »
I love Jerusalem Demsas’ “Housing Breaks People’s Brains” article in The Atlantic from November 2022. For me, it’s a trailhead for understanding why efforts and solutions aimed at the housing access and attainability crisis for so many Americans often short-circuit and fizzle before they can fix anything. Demsas’ unflinching reporting on “localism and shortage denialism”
Housing supply summit highlights the cost of complexity Read More »
Austin city lawmakers bent on ensuring the Texas capital sustains momentum in a housing supply expansion that cuts into a home shortage and slows price growth took another step last week. Thursday, the Austin City Council approved a new package of land-use changes that would accelerate construction of missing-middle housing types such as duplexes, fourplexes
Austin council pushes new zoning laws for missing middle housing Read More »
There seem to be very few things that Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill can agree on these days, but one of them is that housing has become increasingly unaffordable for the average American. And with good reason: housing affordability is the worst it’s been in over 40 years – since the 1980s when mortgage
How the ROAD to Housing Act could improve home affordability Read More »
Ashley Thomas III has assumed the presidency of the National Association of Real Estate Brokers (NAREB) — the nation’s oldest and largest Black real estate organization — with an agenda focused on expanding homeownership access. Thomas, a housing policy and wealth equity strategist with more than 25 years of experience across real estate, lending and
NAREB president calls for ‘optimistic underwriting’ to expand homeownership Read More »
For the past few years, affordability has been what’s stopped a lot of buyers in their tracks. Maybe it stopped you, too. At some point you probably did the math, looked at the monthly payment, and decided to pause your search and wait for things to get better. But here’s something you may have missed
Affordability Has Improved in All 50 States Read More »
New Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s first-year housing agenda delivered new money and new tools for affordable housing preservation, but it fell short on the package’s biggest supply-side proposal: a statewide push to allow multifamily housing by right in many commercially zoned areas. A pair of bills would have required local zoning codes to allow multifamily
Spanberger’s Virginia housing agenda falls short on local pushback Read More »
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on Wednesday announced updates to condominium project standards and property insurance requirements for one- to four-unit properties and project developments, with a stated goal of reducing costs for homeowners. “We are replacing a disruptive and expensive Biden insurance mandate with commonsense policies for today’s market,” Bill Pulte, director of the
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac revise condo insurance standards Read More »