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What the 2026 State of the Nation’s Housing Report Reveals
Each year, the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University publishes The State of the Nation’s Housing, one of the most comprehensive looks at the U.S. housing market. We’ve covered the report before, including the 2019, 2022, and 2025 editions.
The 2026 report describes a housing market that’s largely stuck in place. High prices and mortgage rates have pushed home sales to a 30-year low, and while rent growth has finally cooled, a record share of renters still spend too much of their income on housing. The report describes “interlocking housing crises” of affordability, homelessness, climate change, and discrimination.
Here are some of the report’s key findings.
- Home prices are flattening, but homes remain out of reach for many. Annual home price growth slowed to just 0.7% in February 2026, and 41 of the 100 largest metros saw prices fall. Even so, prices are up 54% since 2020. The median home now costs 4.7 times the median household income, compared with 3.2 times in the 1990s.
- Buying a home costs nearly twice as much each month as it did five years ago. With mortgage rates hovering above 6%, the monthly payment on a median-priced home was $2,420 at the end of 2025, up from $1,240 at the end of 2020. Existing home sales held at 4.1 million in 2025, the lowest level in 30 years.
- First-time buyers are older and fewer than ever. First-time buyers made up just 21% of home purchases, an all-time low, and their median age rose to a record 40. The national homeownership rate slipped to 65.2% in 2025, and the rate for households under age 35 fell to 37.0%.
- Rents are finally cooling, but cost burdens hit a new record. Rents fell 0.5% in early 2026, the first national decline since 2021, and the rental vacancy rate rose to 7.3%. But rents are still 29% higher than in 2020. In 2024, a record 22.7 million renter households (49%) were cost burdened, meaning they spent more than 30% of their income on housing. Half of those, 12.1 million, spent more than 50% classifying them as severely cost burdened.
- Homeowners are feeling the squeeze, too. The number of cost-burdened homeowners rose by 4 million since 2019 to 20.7 million. Property taxes rose 31% and average insurance premiums rose 72% between 2019 and 2025, with even higher costs in disaster-prone states like Texas and Florida.
- Low-cost rentals continue to disappear. The number of units renting for under $600 fell 30% between 2014 and 2024, from 8.3 million to 5.8 million. Today, there are only about 35 affordable and available rental units for every 100 extremely low-income renter households. Meanwhile, total housing starts dipped to 1.4 million in 2025, with single-family starts down 7%.
- Homelessness remains at record levels, while federal help reaches few who need it. More than 770,000 people were counted as homeless on a single night in January 2024, a 33% increase since the start of the pandemic. Only about one in four very low-income renter households receives federal housing assistance. There is one bright spot, namely a permanent 12% increase in Low Income Housing Tax Credit allocations that could support 1.2 million additional affordable homes by 2035.
The report also highlights several trends here in Texas:
- Austin led the nation in falling home prices. Year-over-year home prices fell most sharply in Austin, down 4.5% in February 2026. Austin’s active for-sale listings more than tripled between 2021 and 2025.
- More Texas homes are on the market. In early 2026, the number of homes for sale in Texas was 30% higher than before the pandemic, one of only 10 states (plus Washington, DC) where inventory has fully recovered.
- Rents are dropping in Austin. Asking rents in Austin fell 7% year-over-year, one of the largest declines in the country, as a wave of new apartments came online.
- Lower-income Texas renters are among the hardest hit. Texas is one of four states, along with Utah, California, and Florida, where 87% or more of renters earning under $30,000 a year are cost burdened.
- Insurance costs are higher in Texas. Homeowners insurance premiums rose 72% nationally between 2019 and 2025, and the report notes that costs are even higher in disaster-prone states like Texas and Florida.
- Fewer people are moving to Texas from other states. Population gains from domestic migration have slowed in states like Texas and Florida that have relied heavily on newcomers from other states.
The report’s authors note that growing bipartisan attention to housing, including the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, signals wider recognition of the problem. That said, as federal resources continue to shrink, more of the work will likely fall to states and local communities to solve the ongoing housing affordability challenges.
To dig deeper, we invite you to read the full report or explore the interactive maps and data on the Joint Center for Housing Studies website.
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