HOW HOUSING GLUTS BECOME SHORTAGES

How renters decide to become owners:

After several years of depressed apartment building, many cities have a shortage of rental housing. Although developers are ramping up construction, it will take a year or more to get new units on the market.

“We are now building a third of what we need,” Sharon Dworkin Bell, senior staff vice president of the National Association of Home Builders, said Thursday at the industry’s annual meeting in Florida. “We are very concerned apartments won’t be available – and what’s available will be more expensive than what we have today.” [Emph. added]

Basic economics: Expensive apartments today = rising entry-level home prices tomorrow. . . .