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| How can America solve its growing housing crisis? The answer may be 3D printed houses. |
Everyone agrees the United States has a housing crisis. It's closing in from many directions. The 2020 pandemic increased homelessness. Some cities are overwhelmed with homeless camps because thousands of their residents were evicted from their homes. And that happened while eviction moratoriums were supposedly in force.
While half of Americans can barely pay their rent or mortgage, the other half are doing very well. They are doing so well, they are bidding up the prices of the few houses available for sale.
Home builders are constructing record numbers of houses. But they're paying more for lumber and driving up the cost of those houses to consumers. Rumor has it that in most major markets, if you can pay cash for a house you can win many bidding wars.
Even being able to pay cash doesn't guarantee you anything. In Washington, D.C., 76 out of 88 bids on a house that was unlivable at the time of sale were cash offers. With this crazy housing market, it's hard to imagine why anyone is suffering.
Although you might think it would make sense for people to sell their houses while prices are high, millions of Americans are struggling to borrow money. How can you sell your house if you have no chance to buy a new one?
This isn't a fair situation. But it's not fair to everyone, even the banks.
One of the problems facing our economy is a decline in money velocity. That is the rate at which money changes hands after it enters the economy. It used to be that if a bank loaned someone $100,000, that money was spent on things like cars, houses, and furniture.
The people or companies who received that money then used it to pay salaries, buy goods, and pay other people for services. And this process went on, bit by bit. Each time a dollar is spent, part of it is put into savings. Gradually, the velocity of that dollar reaches zero.
But now the money velocity rate is reaching zero all too soon. The banks aren't lending enough money to people. People aren't spending enough money. And businesses aren't investing enough money.
That's a problem for the economy. Even as people go back to work, they won't be able to spend enough money to kickstart the economy. And that means people who need to buy houses won't be able to borrow the money they need.
So that means the only way out of this mess is to bring down the cost of housing. And it looks like the young 3D house printing industry is the solution Americans need. 3D houses cost half what is required to build traditional stick-built houses. Better yet, 3D houses are less likely to be damaged by storms, floods, and other disasters. And they'll last hundreds of years longer than stick-built houses.
3D printed houses are made from formed concrete. The concrete is "printed" by a massive machine. It only takes about 2 days to put up the foundation and walls. The house can be finished in much less time than it used to take.
I don't know if people still need drywall in 3D printed concrete houses. You might grow tired of the ridges in the walls. But I'm sure the walls can be smoothed in some way (at additional cost).
What really matters is that we stand on the verge of a new era in home building. 3D printed homes may not be for everyone, but they offer hope for millions of families that need to buy homes, or buy larger homes, at a time when house prices are too high.
