Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies

Missing middle housing—a term referring to the building type between a single-family home and a mid-rise apartment building—is increasingly seen as an incremental solution to the affordable housing crisis. Our new series, Unlocking the Missing Middle, examines three aspects of middle housing. In Part 1, co-authored by Chris Herbert and Amy Love Tomasso, we define the building type and barriers to its greater production in Massachusetts. https://lnkd.in/eqcJRxGP

This Wednesday, April 2: What is the impact of investor ownership of single-family rental homes? Our Alexander Hermann joins Laurie Goodman, Donald R Mullen Jr, and Dennis Shea for a conversation at the Bipartisan Policy Center on the state of the single-family rental market, opportunities, and challenges. https://shorturl.at/Nr9d4

Happy #MapMonday (#MappyMonday)! This week, a map from my new Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies paper on pandemic-era changes in residential mobility! One section of the paper discusses regional shifts in migration, with a map that compares average annual domestic migration flows by state before versus after the pandemic. There are many interesting findings in this map, including that many Midwestern and Northeastern states either had diminished outflows or switched from pre-pandemic outflows to post-pandemic inflows. One driver of this could be affordability, which could also explain why the opposite happened in the PNW. Explore the interactive map (where you can see pre-, during-, and post-pandemic averages) in my blog about the new paper: https://lnkd.in/epgtbNzu.

The concept of social housing has been gaining momentum. Join us Friday, April 18 for a half-day event at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design to discuss new efforts to create high-quality, permanently affordable housing that emphasizes inclusion and gives residents more control over their homes. https://lnkd.in/dt5D-EGP

April 10 @ 1pm ET: Former U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia L. Fudge, who is a current fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, joins us for a conversation about the forces driving the housing crisis and ways to make housing more affordable. In-person (for Harvard University ID holders) and online. https://lnkd.in/eqpWbrrX

#FHA announced a major update yesterday, tightening the #residency requirements for borrowers to be eligible for FHA-insured loans. Now only American citizens and permanent residents (those with a green card) will be able to get a FHA #mortgage. This is an important shift and narrows credit availability. This will impact millions of potential borrowers, as there are many immigrants who fall somewhere between undocumented immigrant and green card holder -- think about H1-B visa holders for example, who have often worked and lived in the United States for a long time. FHA is the most common mortgage for first-time #homebuyers. If you're like to get more context on #immigrant homeownership, a 2023 report I co-authored with Livesey Pack while at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies is still timely. You can read a summary and find the full report here: https://lnkd.in/eQqF8fiB

Fri, Mar 28 @ 2pm ET: The cost of property insurance has risen dramatically in recent years. Steve Koller and Carlos Martín will explain how climate change is affecting insurance, and the challenges and opportunities facing residents, real estate investors, insurers, regulators, and policymakers. https://lnkd.in/eHREjpQ6

There were important changes in household mobility during the pandemic, some of which proved temporary while others persisted. Riordan Frost outlines five ways in which mobility patterns changed (or didn't) in the pandemic era. https://lnkd.in/erYHuQ2j

“Higher rents are likely to be one factor behind rising homelessness in many countries” Via: The Economist https://lnkd.in/gZz58MVX

Many Americans who left large cities during the pandemic headed to suburbs, small cities, and rural areas. Since then, net migration outflow from big cities has tapered off, says Riordan Frost. New York had one of the country’s largest net outflows during the pandemic, but the number of people leaving the state is now below prepandemic levels. https://lnkd.in/e6Y9NS5t