More than a year ago, Ali Wolf, Zonda’s chief economist, told Fortune the $300,000 starter home was going extinct. At the time, the housing data and consultancy firm found the share of projects under $300,000 was declining all across the country, and so was affordability.
“We’re creating, inadvertently, a renter society not because of choice but because of force,” Wolf said. Rent isn’t cheap either, even though some predict renting will be cheaper than buying for years. Even so, in Wolf’s mind, $300,000 homes should have been attainable. But everything from the cost of building materials to land availability to the lack of housing to regulation made it so much harder to build affordable homes—and a lot of it stemmed from the pandemic-fueled housing boom.
