Recently the Polk County Housing Trust Fund and Capital Crossroads held a special housing attainability bus tour focused on how communities and builders are responding to the rising cost of today's single family homes. City officials, community stakeholders, and local advocates joined the tour to learn about housing developments from the people who build them.
Affordable housing is top of mind as prices continue to rise. Although our region is better off than many other parts of the country, prices have risen quickly here as well. According to the National Association of Home Builders, the median price of a new construction home in the Greater Des Moines region is now $488,640, and the median home price overall is now $310,000.
Higher prices are not the only challenge in today's market. Higher mortgage rates recently have—for the first time in 20 years—pushed the income needed to afford an average home above the the median income in our region, according to the Home Ownership Attainability Monitor, published by the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank. While many experts we've talked to are hopeful interest rates will moderate in the coming year, prices are less likely to moderate, placing our community in a period of adjustment to a new normal.
In response to these trends, the bus tour focused on various ways that builders are working to make homes more affordable without sacrificing quality:
Smaller Homes: Reducing the square footage of homes results in lower material and construction costs, translating to lower prices. The tour included examples of homes with smaller square footages down to around 1200 sqare feet.
Lot Sizes: Many of these homes are built on 40- to 50-foot-wide lots, reducing land costs.
Simpler Builds: Some homes featured slab-on-grade construction, meaning they have no basements. Additionally, opting for fewer add-ons like garages and elaborate exterior materials helps keep home prices within reach for more families.
We believe it's always a good idea to see housing in person in order to understand the challenges of providing safe, affordable housing today. Now, you can explore much of what our guests saw on the recent housing tour by reviewing the tour guidebook participants received during the tour.
Download the booklet now, and in the coming days we'll be sharing some more of the facts and statistics we provided in the tour as additional blog posts.