The housing crisis is among the biggest challenges across the country. Home prices and apartment rents are frequently reaching new records, thanks largely to a housing shortage. While there are several factors at play—from high construction costs to limited labor—the limited availability of developable land is a fundamental challenge. No matter how much is costs to build, you have to have a land site.

"The lack of developable land today is a direct result of the Great Recession when the housing and financial markets crashed," Noah Breakstone, CEO at BTI Partners, tells GlobeSt.com. "During these years, the development of new residential communities came to a halt for several reasons, including the lack of financing for developers and home buyers and an abundance of discounted inventory due to the wave of foreclosed homes. Today, we are seeing the consequences of a relatively prolonged gap in the acquisition, entitlement, and development of land for new residential communities nearly a decade ago."

It can take two to four years, depending on the location, to prep ready-to-build land for new development. This includes securing entitlements and permits. "We missed several years of that process so, as a result, we have less developable land available for new construction," says Breakstone. "This has resulted in a significant national housing deficit."

Continue Reading for Free

Register and gain access to:

  • Breaking commercial real estate news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
  • Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
  • Critical coverage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.

Kelsi Maree Borland

Kelsi Maree Borland is a freelance journalist and magazine writer based in Los Angeles, California. For more than 5 years, she has extensively reported on the commercial real estate industry, covering major deals across all commercial asset classes, investment strategy and capital markets trends, market commentary, economic trends and new technologies disrupting and revolutionizing the industry. Her work appears daily on GlobeSt.com and regularly in Real Estate Forum Magazine. As a magazine writer, she covers lifestyle and travel trends. Her work has appeared in Angeleno, Los Angeles Magazine, Travel and Leisure and more.