A shift toward townhouses could address some of America’s housing woes
A shift toward townhouses could address some of America’s housing woes
We don’t have to tell you that housing is expensive. The median sale price for a house in the United States is above $427,000, up 3.9% from the year before, and the average 30-year mortgage is still well above 6%, despite interest rate cuts. The housing shortage isn’t helping the issue; experts say the country needs 3 million to 7 million housing units.
Rather than finding a way to put those classic single-family homes in reach for all Americans, Washington Post columnist Heather Long suggests shifting the goal in a piece titled “The new American Dream should be a townhouse.” She joined “Marketplace’s” Amy Scott to talk about this more affordable option. An edited transcript of their conversation is below.
Amy Scott: Let’s start with your headline: “The new American Dream should be a townhouse.” Why townhouses?
Heather Long: It was a bit of a provocative headline. But the basic idea is people are in desperate need of affordable housing, and one of your obvious options if you’re from other countries would be, why don’t you look for a condo or a high-rise building? And the reality is, the United States has built almost no condos since 2009, but what we are building are townhomes, or what’s known as medium-density housing. So everything from duplexes to townhomes to cottage courts. I didn’t even know what a cottage court was until I started researching all of this, but a lot of young people like them because they’re low-maintenance lifestyle. You don’t have to spend every weekend raking the leaves and doing the yard. Usually, there’s some sort of homeowners association that does that for you, and it’s a better use of space. You can fit more of these types of houses near a public transit hub or near a lot of grocery stores and amenities, but it’s just a lot more affordable.
Scott: And how much more affordable can this be?
Long: It’s pretty substantial. Obviously, it varies a lot, like everything across the United States, but we had Zillow run the numbers, and in a major metro area like, let’s take Los Angeles or Miami, it can be $200,000 less in the sale price versus a single-family home. And the other thing that people forget is it’s less to maintain something like a townhome or a row home because you are splitting those costs. You share that one or two walls with a neighbor. Usually, the insurance costs are a big one. Those are usually lower on a townhome than a stand-alone home. Taxes are often lower because you’re on a smaller lot size. So a lot of that quickly adds up for people, and that’s why I think it used to be seen as just a starter home. And as I called around the country, builders kept telling me, “I’m constantly amazed at the large age range of people and types of people who are interested in townhomes today, [who] would not have been, you know, 25 years ago.”
Scott: Given the the appeal you just described, it might surprise people to learn that townhouses are actually illegal in many communities. Why is that?
Long: They’re hard to do, I know. Everybody keeps talking about zoning, zoning, zoning. There are some funny building codes that make it really difficult in some communities. Often townhomes are usually two stories high, but in some places, it might be three stories high, and some building codes and zoning codes start to consider three stories in a very different light. It has to have a lot of different requirements that are built in that make it cost prohibitive. I will say on the positive side, some communities have become embracing of townhomes, not just because they’re more affordable, but a lot of communities don’t want to zone single-family traditional homes right next to, say, a grocery store or a Walmart or some sort of shopping center, but they will allow townhomes as like a transitional from the shopping center. Then you can have the medium density, and then you can have your more traditional, single-family home.
Scott: So I’m wondering how much of this is about people’s preferences versus what builders are offering. I mean, is there enough demand for townhouses to drive more construction?
Long: There is now, and the encouraging news is there’s actually been, I would call it a mini boom in townhome construction in the last two or three years. What’s interesting is we’ve been talking a lot in the United States about the shifting of family size and preferences, and this is playing into what people want too. We have more and more families that are going childless, more and more who are only having one child, and so you don’t need a home with five or six bedrooms. You don’t need the big McMansion anymore. And we got a lot of blowback on this on the piece — it’s not for everyone — and the No. 1 issue is stairs. Townhomes, row homes, even something like a duplex, do have stairs, and obviously, people who want to age in place, that can be a challenge. And mobility, anyone with a mobility issue just cannot do the number of stairs. But the reality is we only have 10% of our entire housing stock in this country that’s high-rise apartments or condos that would be really well suited to some of that aging in place and mobility issues. And so I see this growth of townhomes as helping to free up more of that limited supply of housing that works well for the mobility challenged if we can get other folks buying an affordable townhome.
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