By Brian O’Leary, AICP

The Pennsylvania Capital-Star recently featured an interesting and thought-provoking opinion piece by Heather MacDonald about the evolving housing market and what it says about our nation, post-pandemic.

The article makes a few key points:

• Income inequality comes through prominently in new housing data, which shows that the median age of new home buyers is at an all-time high while the share of first-time homebuyers is at an all-time low. These and other statistics were not surprising and reflect the depressingly-high cost of housing right now.
• Reflecting national household trends, the makeup of homebuyers continues to shift away from married couples towards singles and unmarried couples; nevertheless, 61% of new homebuyers were married couples, which still seems like a fairly high percentage.
• Reflecting the ability of many homebuyers to work remotely and the ongoing repercussions of the pandemic, the distance that new homebuyers moved was at an all-time high. The Zoom Town phenomena is certainly a major factor in this statistic.

The full article, with more statistics, can be found here.