Maybe this is just something that isn't widely known, but a huge reason why housing costs are so high is we are still digging ourselves out of an enormous deficit of new housing supply since the Great Recession. We are still below the peak before the Great Recession.
It took basically four years from the start of the recession to even have any recovery in housing starts. And there was also a setback with the pandemic recession that took about a year to recover to where it was before the pandemic.
But we really still have a ways to make up the deficit. Freddie Mac estimates there's a housing deficit of ~3.8 million units.
Fewer starter homes are also being built..
