The discrepancy behind the death of starter homes

Read more: Greater rental demand shrinking starter home supply

“From a builder’s view, there’s nothing particularly preferable about higher-end homes. Their profit margins aren’t generally higher. They demand more customization. They’re riskier to build in economic downtimes,” The New York Times reported. “Entry-level housing, on the other hand, is invariably in deep demand.”

As land grows more expensive, architect Daniel Parolek claimed the best solution is to build entry-level housing with more duplexes and more rowhouses similar to the kind of housing seen a century ago: “We need to shift our culture away from this dependency on single-family detached housing, and thinking it’s the only solution.”

Doing so would require builders and buyers to rethink the single-family home – and the broader community included. Jason Nageli, operations manager at Holmes Homes, told The New York Times that if more communities allowed the new construction of starter homes, then builders would gladly return to that end of the market.

“We would be thriving in it,” Nageli said.