A lack of affordable housing certainly feels like a global phenomenon. Companies are trying to 3D-print homes for under $100k. Berlin froze apartment rents back in 2019 because things were getting too expensive. And today, Hong Kong is working on building some sort of "light public housing" in an effort to reduce its massive wait times for new homes.

But depending on where you are in the world, it might be somewhat comforting to remember that this problem seems to be particularly pronounced, here, in English-speaking countries. Whether it's restrictive zoning rules or a general distaste for apartments and urban density, the English-speaking world has fallen behind on housing supply compared to places like continental Europe.

Here's an excerpt from a recent FT article:

Forty years ago, the UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland had roughly 400 homes per 1,000 residents, level with developed continental European countries. Since then the two groups have diverged, the Anglosphere standing still while western Europe has pulled clear to 560 per 1,000.

And this shows in our home prices:

One argument is that continental Europe is simply more culturally accepting of apartment buildings, and that allows more new homes to be built. Seems right:

According to this chart, the average person from the UK or the US would not be happy unless they were living in a detached house. When you get to the continent, people start to become increasingly more positive around missing middle-type housing (something in the 3-4 storey range). Though, anything more than that and things get divided.

All in all, it doesn't seem to really matter where you're from, there's a clear preference for detached housing. But maybe liking apartments even a little bit is all you need to help with overall housing supply.

The Old Urbanist (Charlie Gardner) recently published an interesting post talking about the origins of American zoning using the work of Professor Sonia Hirt and her new book, Zoned in the USA: The Origins and Implications of American Land-Use Regulation.

One of the central themes in his post is the American (and Canadian) fixation on single-family homes:

…the United States is the only developed country of those surveyed, apart from Canada, to widely employ single-family detached residential zones that bar all commercial and multifamily uses.

And the reason for this is largely because of two longstanding beliefs in American (and again Canadian) culture: Your goal should be to become a homeowner, and that home should ideally be a single-family detached home.

But there’s lots of evidence to suggest that these legal protections (and many of the other things being done to encourage/subsidize homeownership) aren’t actually that effective at driving up homeownership.

In his post, Charlie includes a chart showing the percentage of detached homes and the homeownership rates for various countries (data is from 2013/2014). I sorted it based on homeownership and added urbanization rates to see if there was any correlation (doesn’t appear to be).

Source: Charlie Gardner & Wikipedia

The US and Canada are quite good at putting lots of people in detached housing (though not as good as Australia!), but the homeownership rates are nowhere near the top. In fact, the US falls in the lower half.

Did you think the homeownership rate would be higher in the US?

A lack of affordable housing certainly feels like a global phenomenon. Companies are trying to 3D-print homes for under $100k. Berlin froze apartment rents back in 2019 because things were getting too expensive. And today, Hong Kong is working on building some sort of "light public housing" in an effort to reduce its massive wait times for new homes.

But depending on where you are in the world, it might be somewhat comforting to remember that this problem seems to be particularly pronounced, here, in English-speaking countries. Whether it's restrictive zoning rules or a general distaste for apartments and urban density, the English-speaking world has fallen behind on housing supply compared to places like continental Europe.

Here's an excerpt from a recent FT article:

Forty years ago, the UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland had roughly 400 homes per 1,000 residents, level with developed continental European countries. Since then the two groups have diverged, the Anglosphere standing still while western Europe has pulled clear to 560 per 1,000.

And this shows in our home prices:

One argument is that continental Europe is simply more culturally accepting of apartment buildings, and that allows more new homes to be built. Seems right:

According to this chart, the average person from the UK or the US would not be happy unless they were living in a detached house. When you get to the continent, people start to become increasingly more positive around missing middle-type housing (something in the 3-4 storey range). Though, anything more than that and things get divided.

All in all, it doesn't seem to really matter where you're from, there's a clear preference for detached housing. But maybe liking apartments even a little bit is all you need to help with overall housing supply.

The Old Urbanist (Charlie Gardner) recently published an interesting post talking about the origins of American zoning using the work of Professor Sonia Hirt and her new book, Zoned in the USA: The Origins and Implications of American Land-Use Regulation.

One of the central themes in his post is the American (and Canadian) fixation on single-family homes:

…the United States is the only developed country of those surveyed, apart from Canada, to widely employ single-family detached residential zones that bar all commercial and multifamily uses.

And the reason for this is largely because of two longstanding beliefs in American (and again Canadian) culture: Your goal should be to become a homeowner, and that home should ideally be a single-family detached home.

But there’s lots of evidence to suggest that these legal protections (and many of the other things being done to encourage/subsidize homeownership) aren’t actually that effective at driving up homeownership.

In his post, Charlie includes a chart showing the percentage of detached homes and the homeownership rates for various countries (data is from 2013/2014). I sorted it based on homeownership and added urbanization rates to see if there was any correlation (doesn’t appear to be).

Source: Charlie Gardner & Wikipedia

The US and Canada are quite good at putting lots of people in detached housing (though not as good as Australia!), but the homeownership rates are nowhere near the top. In fact, the US falls in the lower half.

Did you think the homeownership rate would be higher in the US?