>A U.S. Census Bureau survey found almost 592,000 new apartments were finished last year, the most since the 1970s, when baby boomers sparked a construction surge as they moved out of their childhood homes. There were 693,000 new apartments built in 1974, when the country had about half as many households.
I feel the numbers would be best contextualized as ratios of demand (e.g: prospective homeowners).
As a rough first approximation, Google gives me the US population in 1974 as: ~212.53M, with the 2025 population at: ~347M.
So it'd be more significant with: 1.63 * 693k = ~1.131M new apartments.
Of course, this is a rough approximation which doesn't take into account a host of other factors, but you can already guess things are not as optimistic as the headline would make it seem. That said, I'd guess those factors would further increase the "households per capita", with phenomena like the shrinking of nuclear families relative to the 1970s.
For example, googling average household size gives me: 1974=3.44 and in 2025=2.51. This yields roughly: 61.78M households in 1974 vs 138.24M households in 2025. Which means we'd ideally want to see something closer to: 2.26 * 693k = 1.57M new apartments.
Also, it doesn't make sense to price homes in absolute terms. Surely relative to wage would be a better indication of the health of the market. Unless we can bring the wealthy to heel of course.
This is just apartment (5+ units in a building) completions though, not all housing units completions.
The mix of housing unit type has a large effect. In terms of total unit completions, we're still behind where we were in 2006, the mid-80s, the late 70s and nowhere near early 70s.
> when baby boomers sparked a construction surge as they moved out of their childhood homes.
Man, boomers had smarter parents than boomers' children had. When the much more numerous millennials wanted houses, boomers told them to go jump in a lake.
I feel the numbers would be best contextualized as ratios of demand (e.g: prospective homeowners).
As a rough first approximation, Google gives me the US population in 1974 as: ~212.53M, with the 2025 population at: ~347M.
So it'd be more significant with: 1.63 * 693k = ~1.131M new apartments.
Of course, this is a rough approximation which doesn't take into account a host of other factors, but you can already guess things are not as optimistic as the headline would make it seem. That said, I'd guess those factors would further increase the "households per capita", with phenomena like the shrinking of nuclear families relative to the 1970s.
For example, googling average household size gives me: 1974=3.44 and in 2025=2.51. This yields roughly: 61.78M households in 1974 vs 138.24M households in 2025. Which means we'd ideally want to see something closer to: 2.26 * 693k = 1.57M new apartments.