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This is fresh air. I'm Tanya Mosley. As we head into 2025, housing is still one of the most important issues on the minds of millions of Americans.

The dream of owning or even renting a place is in peril.

People are paying a million dollars for starter homes.

New construction is moving at a snail's pace, and the latest data shows that in 2023, home sales were the

slowest in three decades. Many homeowners aren't selling or upgrading because the market

for getting into another house is just too high. Renters aren't catching a break either. On

average, they're spending 30% of their income on housing, and that stat includes people who live

in places that had the reputation of being more affordable, like the Midwest and the South.

Changes to our climate are also redrawing real estate maps, impacting where people can

live and what they can afford. President-elect Donald Trump says some of his plans to tackle the crisis include regulations

on construction, opening up federal land for housing, and mass deportation. How feasible are these ideas,

and why is this such a dire moment in the housing crisis? Well, our guest today, to talk about all of

this has been Keyes. He's the

Rowan Family Foundation Professor of Real Estate and Finance at the University of Pennsylvania's

Wharton School. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. And

Ben Keyes, welcome to fresh air. Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

You know, Ben, one of the more frustrating issues right now is that there just isn't enough affordable housing.

And from my understanding, like so much of this current housing crisis, this can be traced back to the financial crisis of 2008. It's like a snowball effect.

That's right. I mean, I think we can characterize the current state of the housing market as being deeply unaffordable. That's a very expensive market right now. High home prices and high interest rates,

making, you know, entering the housing market or moving up the property ladder, very challenging.

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