You know, it's no secret for years now. The United States has been in the depths of a housing

shortage, a housing crisis, if you will. From a basic economic standpoint, a normal balanced

housing market should have about four to six months supply available of houses. Anything

less than that's considered a housing shortage.

The National Association of Realtors reported a 3.2 month supply back in December.

Now, depending on what source you use, the estimates can vary on exactly how big this shortage is,

but definitely it's in the ballpark of millions of homes. In fact, Axios reported a shortage of

3.2 million homes. CNN says 6.5 million.

So no matter how you run the numbers, it's clear there's a big problem here.

There's not just one main reason for a shortage this massive, rather a combination of things that

have contributed to the affordable housing crisis. If you want a deeper dive on this, I highly

encourage you to check out this video called how the affordable housing crisis just got worse.

But for now, let's briefly touch on a few main factors that have created a shortage in the

housing market. First, the cost of materials and labor have made it more expensive to build

properties. Then labor shortages and the construction

industry have slowed things down. Then add on top of it inflation makes the prices of homes

appreciate even faster. Higher interest rates over the past few years have created larger

mortgage payments, pricing out a lot of buyers. And on a similar note, because rates have been

higher, home buyers are locked into mortgage rates below 5%.

They've been largely hesitant to sell their property.

So they're sitting on those lower interest rates.

They don't want to sell buyers with the higher interest rates can't buy.

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