US housing construction has not kept pace with population growth since the 1980s. Housing crunch is not merely an artifact of the Covid supply chain disruption or the improvement in consumer debt profile and savings rates. The shortage of US housing has been building for nearly four decades and the market is still suffering a major hangover from the 2006 financial collapse. The April housing starts of 1.8 million units at an annual rate only just got us back to the 1998 level of new home construction and lags well behind the 2.5 million annual rate of the early 1970s. Meanwhile, the US population has grown by over 50% during that same period. And even though the Fed’s ongoing rate hikes are dampening demand for now, the long-term imbalance will take . . .
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