Let’s rewind back to the Pandemic Housing Boom, what now feels like a short-lived period of low mortgage rates and a dwindling age of remote work that combined to fuel housing demand. That pushed housing prices up—on a national level, up a whopping 41% during the Pandemic Housing Boom. Fast-forward to the present day and mortgage rates are up and prices still are, too, so what does that mean for housing affordability? It means bad, bad things.
Housing data and consultancy firm Zonda tracks the entire building lifecycle, beginning with what’s happening with raw land, into how that land is developed, and then what the homes sell for. This includes new home projects across the country and the percentage of those projects under $300,000. In comparing data from February 2019 and Feburary 2023, Zonda found that the share of projects under $300,000 declining all across the country.
