If you check out the “What I read” page that I recently added to Architect This City, you might notice a blog by Charlie Gardner called the Old Urbanist. I discovered it a few months ago (when he added ATC to his blog roll) and it’s good stuff.

Last week he posted this interesting piece comparing homeownership rates and house sizes in both Mexico and the US. His finding is that there’s a fundamental mismatch in America in terms of the size of housing and the size of households. One and two person households now represent more than half of the market, and are on the rise, and yet 40% of houses in the US have 3 bedrooms.

Because of this mismatch, he’s arguing that households are being poorly served by the US housing market and that it’s driving down homeownership levels. It currently sits around 65%

If you check out the “What I read” page that I recently added to Architect This City, you might notice a blog by Charlie Gardner called the Old Urbanist. I discovered it a few months ago (when he added ATC to his blog roll) and it’s good stuff.

Last week he posted this interesting piece comparing homeownership rates and house sizes in both Mexico and the US. His finding is that there’s a fundamental mismatch in America in terms of the size of housing and the size of households. One and two person households now represent more than half of the market, and are on the rise, and yet 40% of houses in the US have 3 bedrooms.

Because of this mismatch, he’s arguing that households are being poorly served by the US housing market and that it’s driving down homeownership levels. It currently sits around 65%