Working From Home in Big Apartment Buildings, Making Small-Batch Rye

Apartment construction has made a big comeback over the course of this economic expansion, with more new multifamily units completed in 2017 than in any year since 1989, according to the Census Bureau. But the number of new apartment buildings going up is still way below 1980s and even 1990s levels — because the recent boom in apartment construction has been concentrated in very big buildings.

Yes, it’s time for my third annual charts of the year column! This chart, which first ran with a column in June, just after the annual Characteristics of New Housing data was released, is one of my favorites because it so succinctly illustrates the constraints shaping residential development in the U.S. Big new apartment buildings have been going up near downtowns and suburban commercial centers all over the country, while single-family houses are still being constructed on the fringes of metropolitan areas, but existing residential areas where smaller multi-unit buildings would be most appropriate aren’t adding new housing at all. There’s increasing political pressure to do something about this, with Minneapolis abolishing single-family zoning in much of the city and other cities and even states discussing similar measures. We’ll see how much that changes things.