Increasing housing costs will likely remain due to a lack of existing home sales, high interest rates, and elevated construction costs, according to the recently released State of the U.S. Housing Market 2024 report by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. Single-family home construction rose throughout 2023 but was still 6.2% lower than 2022 totals. The average seasonally adjusted annualized rate of construction in the first quarter of 2023 was 828,000, growing to 1.06 in the fourth quarter and continued into 2024. See Harvard