NAR (2021)
The horizontal red line on the chart shows the average number of housing starts nationally between 1960 and 2020. The blue lines show the number of starts each year. The two vertical red lines show projected starts this year and next, said the chief economist of the National Association of Realtors.
Housing inventory is historically low, and not just in the region, said the National Association of Realtors chief economist on Wednesday Aug. 18. Lawrence Yun delivered the presentation to an audience gathered at SUNY Adirondack via Zoom. He said that the United States has not been building enough housing to replace homes that are demolished to make way for other construction or to handle the growth in population.
“We have been under average [in home construction], greatly under average, not for one, two or three years but for 15 straight years,” Yun said, citing a report from Harvard University. He said according to the report, for the first time since 2007, the average number of housing starts in 2021 will be above the annual average of starts from 1960 to 2020.
“We have a housing shortage across the country. This housing shortage will not go away overnight. It’s going to take some time,” he said.
That statement was the theme of the hour-long event hosted by the Warren County Economic Development Corporation. Yun spoke for about 30 minutes.
“We’ve seen spectacular growth in terms of home sales and prices,” during the pandemic, Yun said. “We have never seen such price appreciation.”
Because of this, “prices are becoming a challenge for first-time buyers,” Yun said.
Those gathered—a few dozen realtors, developers and politicians—joined in a conversation with EDC President Jim Siplon and Mary Peyton, president of Southern Adirondack Realtors.
Siplon was quick to add that in this area not only are new buyers priced out, but the inventory is too low to accommodate those who can buy.
Currently fewer than 100 houses are for sale for $350,000 or less in Warren County, Siplon said. Yet the region has 2,600 open jobs. Not all of those jobs pay at a level that would allow people to buy homes, but Siplon said it is this disconnect between housing and need that must be addressed.
He referenced a survey that his group and the Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism conducted at the start of the year. It said that about 8,000 families were in process of moving to the Adirondack region and thousands more had thought about it so long their jobs could allow remote work and the region could provide housing, broadband internet access and other amenities. [Read more about it here.]
“This is not a crisis...This is an opportunity,” Siplon said, adding that the county and region needs to change its attitude toward development. Development must be thought of as a net benefit to the region, not as a bogeyman, he said.
Speaking from the back of the room, Warren Washington Industrial Development Agency head Dave O’Brien said the first question larger corporations want to know before they move an industry to the area, before they look at developing space, is whether or not there is housing for their employees.
“It’s so important...that we have a readily available stock of housing,” he said.
Jeff Flagg, the economic development director of Glens Falls, has in the past looked to alternative uses for empty office space in the downtown area, and he asked those gathered not just to consider housing but to “look at the overall building stock” to think about how some of that space might be repurposed into housing.
Siplon said that the region must have the difficult conversations about development, about zoning, and about the idea that some towns, especially in the Adirondack Park, do not have the population to sustain themselves.
He said: "We've got to get busy figuring out what to do."
Read more about shrinking towns here.
Read more about affordable housing here.