The latest data from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies reports the rise in housing prices, while lauded by many, is driving many potential home buyers out of the market because incomes are not rising along with home prices. From 2001 to 2011 the number of households paying over 50 percent of their income for housing rose 6.7 million, an increase of 49 percent. This rise in households (includes renters) severely burdened has hit record highs, just as millions of federal rent subsidies will expire over the next ten years. As MHProNews has learned from creditwritedowns.com, the market is demanding one million new residential units annually. If construction cannot keep up this pace, home prices and rents will continue to rise, and if incomes do not then rise, the housing cost burden will spread to more households.
