The global housing affordability crisis
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It's not just the U.S. — real estate is becoming increasingly unaffordable across most wealthy countries, as the Financial Times recently reported.
Why it matters: High and rising housing costs mean people have less money to spend on other things, and make it harder for folks to move. At the extreme end, a lack of affordable homes pushes more people into homelessness.
State of play: The share of people in OECD countries who say they're satisfied with the availability of good, affordable housing fell to 45% in 2023 from 51% in 2019, according to the Gallup World Poll, an annual survey.
- In these countries people are less satisfied with housing than they are with things like health care or education.
Zoom in: The numbers were particularly bleak in the U.S., where high mortgage rates have put buying a home out of reach for many. Just 39% of respondents said they were satisfied with housing affordability, compared to 59% in 2019.
- It's worse in Canada, where just 30% of respondents are satisfied with home affordability.
The big picture: This is a story about higher mortgage rates putting homes out of reach — they pretty much rose across all these countries — and about lack of home construction.
- Home building in the U.S. never really bounced back from the financial crisis housing bust, as Conor Dougherty recently wrote in the New York Times.
- It's not just a U.S. thing. "Basically we haven't built enough," Willem Adema, a senior economist in the social policy division of the OECD, tells the FT.
