There continues to be a severe housing shortage in America - including a problem of serious housing affordability issues. Not every American earns the average median salary of $51,168. Why? People who can afford to rent/buy homes inside the metro cities or near work are very few. The number of houses in the cities is limited, and the number of people is increasing every day, caused by migration due to work. And finding places to live for American citizens from all walks of life has become a major issue.
There are also many international residents in America who come and settle in the metro cities for work, making the housing crunch even more severe. But the housing crunch issue has been knocking on American doors for a while now. The problem is much deep-seated for real estate business owners to solve, but they can surely focus on finding viable solutions. As a real estate business owner or manager, you can plan your strategy and leadership to cater to this problem. Read this article to find out the best solutions to this issue and how you can get involved.
The American housing crisis is real
Pew Research Center survey on the American housing crunch has found that more than 49% of Americans find it hard to rent/buy houses in their own localities. Moreover, more than 70% of young Americans find it much harder to find suitable houses for themselves than their previous generations.
A lot of factors contributed to this situation, like
Incomes have not increased at the same rate as house prices increased.
Construction of houses has slowed down.
The pandemic pushed mortgage rates to a record low, leading to many people buying houses and reducing the availability of houses in the market.
Shortage of labor and materials is another contributing factor.
The number of immigrant/foreign residents is increasing, but the number of houses is not increasing at the same rate.
6 ways to solve the housing crisis in the USA
As a real estate business owner or landlord, here are some changes you can consider to help solve the American housing crisis issue. Check them out.
Increase productivity at lower costs
Real estate construction work needs to be faster but at lower costs to make housing more affordable for people from all income groups. How can this happen? Using sustainable, reusable and affordable materials can be the first step; the other is to provide incentives to workers for faster work. You can also take help from governmental affordable housing schemes to help further better and support your plans.
But managing this construction work and handling the management of affordable housing can be a taxing job. You can use a selection of technology in project management, like MRI software to easily manage your affordable housing project. You can also use the latest software like Procore to streamline and automate the construction management work and speed up your work.
Build and preserve affordable housing options
As real estate landlords and developers, it is not just your responsibility to speed up the construction of houses. Another innovative way to help the housing crisis is to build more affordable housing solutions and preserve them. In most cases in America, affordable housing options are mostly in bad shape; they are not well-maintained, leading to places having a much shorter lifespan.
Proper maintenance and upkeep of these properties are key factors to keeping these places habitable and long-lasting.
Build multi-family homes, omit single-family homes
There is an obvious space crunch, resulting in a severe crisis for land, not just homes. Single-family homes take up more land but house only one family. At the same time, multi-family and mixed-use properties use a certain amount of land to house, multiple families, in the same place. So the best bet is to make multi-family and mixed-use homes rather than single-family ones.
Forbes reports say that even during the pandemic, multi-family homes saw a 50% rise in production and sales. This market is growing, and it is profitable and also solves the housing issue. As a real estate business owner, you need to tap into this market to grow your business from all dimensions.
Capping the rise of housing costs
This is more of a policy change where governmental laws can put a cap on the rising prices of houses, be it for sale or rent. But as a real estate business person, you can also partake in this plan. How? Use inexpensive construction materials to bring down the overall cost of your houses and units and make them more affordable to the masses.
Engage big businesses in funding
Many big tech giants like Facebook, Google, and even Amazon have pledged millions of dollars toward affordable housing solutions. Why are they getting involved? One of the primary reasons is that their own employees are failing to find housing around the city and join work.
This is a philanthropic initiative helping solve the USA's housing crisis. As a real estate developer and owner, you can get the big tech businesses involved to fund your affordable housing projects to help pave the way forward.
Focus on manufactured homes
Manufactured homes have a lot of stigma around them. These manufactured homes take lesser time to assemble because they are produced in production units. Their construction will not take as long as the other conventional homes, helping in solving the housing issue. But constructing homes off-site and getting them set up in the the desired location can also be a quick solution to the immediate housing crunch.
What is the way forward?
The housing crunch issue is here to stay, and as a real estate business owner or developer, you can certainly play a part in handling this growing crisis. But for these plans to work out, you need a range of things like planning strategy, leadership inside the company, and streamlined project management. Above that, you need a proper technology selection to automate your management work and speed up your everyday business process to address the housing crisis issue faster.
At Assetsoft, we can help you with all of it. Get in touch with us to find out more!