There's a shortage of detached single family homes in desirable cities and suburbs.
If you just want to rent an apartment there's an oversupply from overbuilding during the pandemic.
If you just want to rent an apartment there's an oversupply from overbuilding during the pandemic.
If anything, there's a massive under-supply of 3+br apartments large enough for families, due to double-loaded corridor designs that are almost required to meet fire codes. The only good spot for 3brs is in the corners, so you get at most 4 per floor.
Once your second child hits grade school they should have a proper bedroom.
But in “you damn kids don’t know how good you got it” news, I’m of an age where I knew people who had to share a room with a sibling. And there was lots of talk about how that used to be more common. Those boomer kids with five siblings weren’t living in 7 bedroom mansions. They were doubled up in a four bedroom house.
But the last building I lived in shaped like that had a pair of 1 BRs at the corners, scalloped to get windows on 2 sides.
When I think of 3 bedroom apartments I think of college towns.
You have this backwards, it's essentially physically impossible for this to not be the case. Past a certain point you just cannot squeeze more detached single family homes into a reasonable distance from a city. Single family homes, suburbs, and the required car-centric transit they require are massively space and transit inefficient. If you want there to be affordable detached single family homes within a reasonable distance to a desirable city your best bet is to push for increased density within and around the core of the city, with walkable streets and excellent public transportation. The increase in livability and affordability in the center encourages more people who might otherwise be pushed out to stay and leaves more single family homes for those who really want them.
Even if there were an “oversupply”, if someone could build new apartment buildings at 50% the cost with larger, safer, more comfortable units than most apartments nearby, it would drive rents down for existing buildings while still allowing the developer to make a profit. We should be enabling these opportunities as much as possible.
If you can rent a new construction 1 bed for under $2k a month in a jobs center there is no apartment shortage in your city.
And how does that tell you that supply exceeds demand?
Even when there's a housing undersupply, units will still be available at any given moment. It's not like people stop dying, moving out or building altogether.
To determine oversupply, you need to look at something that also tells you demand as well. Like, what's the average time available units are on the market? What's the vacancy rate look like?
Where are grocery clerks, baristas, school teachers, janitors, restaurant workers, etc supposed to live?
We need to build higher density housing in the desirable areas, which is often disallowed by zoning.
This dynamic means that folks who own what you correctly categorize as owning "detached single family homes in (or close) to desirable cities" who no longer care about the commute might be overall willing to sell these homes in favor of larger/more affordable homes further out, freeing up these homes to those for whom city proximity still matters.
I think there are really two core demographics at play with a small middle. There are those who are all about the city life - don't want a car, don't want a house, want to walk to work and to the tinder date, be around a large number of diverse people and experiences, etc. Then there are those who primarily orient their life around home/family and want the space/affordability. Distance to city mainly matters as a factor of the commute, which itself is less relevant than it was before.
Then there's the relatively smaller group that both wants a house and needs to be close to the city life. This group will continue to pay the highest costs because they have the highest demand but I think that's reasonable.
America is not a country where people want to live in an apartment long term if they have the resources to buy a proper home.
You are projecting your personal preferences on the American population. Some of the highest occupancy apartment buildings in my area are full of people who can afford to buy a house anywhere they want to yet clearly choose otherwise. Apartment living has significant advantages that don't disappear just because you ignore them. It is an explicit preference of several people I know.