Residential construction enjoyed its seventh consecutive year of growth in 2016. But it still fell far short of annual averages during the 1980s and 1990s. And multifamily construction, which has been the industry’s engine for nearly a decade, flattened.
In its “State of the Nation’s Housing 2017,” which it released today, Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies notes that home prices rose 5.6% last year, “finally surpassing the high reached nearly a decade earlier.” But in inflation-adjusted terms, home values still remained nearly 15% below their previous high.
