Report: Housing Construction Not Meeting Middle Class Needs

The Urban Land Institute’s (ULI) Terwilliger Center for Housing and real estate consulting firm RCLCO released a new report exploring the "shortage of housing affordable to moderate-income home buyers, including first-time buyers, and offers solutions to increase the supply," according to an article by Brenda Richardson.

The report defines "attainable housing" as "non-subsidized, for-sale housing that is affordable to households with incomes between 80 and 120 percent of the area median income." Given that definition, the report finds that "very little non-subsidized home-building activity is geared toward the middle-class price point."

Still, there are signs that the market is starting to respond to demand at the "attainable" price point. "Innovations are coming from publicly held home builders, developers of master-planned communities, neighborhood-based real estate investors and a new breed of entrepreneurs from other industries, the report states," according to Richardson.

The new report joins recent analysis from Brookings that examines housing stress in the middle class of the United States in providing new insights into the post-Recession housing market for earners historically primed to enter the home buying market.