A lack of housing supply is a serious issue in the U.S. It has put upward pressure on home prices and made buying prohibitively expensive for many.

That said, new housing units are being constructed. We have a long way to go before the nation’s housing shortage is fully addressed, but it’s worth recognizing the progress. To find out where these new homes are being built, we analyzed the latest housing data and found that recently built houses aren’t particularly common in the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas. Here's what else we found. 

• Across the nation’s 50 largest metros, 1.48 million housing units were built from 2020 through 2022. Put another way, just 1.95% of these metros’ 75.89 million housing units were built from 2020 through 2022.
• Recently built housing units make up the largest share of homes in three South metros — Austin, Nashville, and San Antonio. In these metros, 5.97%, 5.04% and 4.74% of housing units, respectively, were built from 2020 through 2022. 
• New homes make up the smallest share of the housing supply in three Northeast metros — Hartford, Buffalo, and Providence. In these metros, 0.47%, 0.59% and 0.67% of housing units, respectively, were built from 2020 through 2022.
• New homes tend to be more expensive than other houses, though exceptions exist. For example, the median value of homes built from 2020 through 2022 was lower than the overall median home value in only two metros, San Francisco and Austin. 

You can check out our full report here: https://www.lendingtree.com/home/mortgage/new-housing-units-study/

LendingTree's Senior Economist and report author, Jacob Channel, had this to say:

"Ultimately, home prices in the United States are unlikely to become truly affordable until more new homes are built. The more housing supply there is, the less upward pressure there’s likely to be on prices and the more affordable buying a home will be. Unfortunately, as LendingTree’s study shows, most areas aren’t building particularly large amounts of new housing and we have a long way to go before we’ve introduced enough supply to bring prices down."