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What is the Joint Center for Housing Studies?
The Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS) at Harvard University is a research center focused on housing in the United States. Its work covers homeownership, rental housing, remodeling and repair, affordability, and how demographic change shapes housing demand. Rather than offering consumer services or listings, it publishes data-driven reports, research briefs, and blog posts intended to inform policymakers, industry professionals, journalists, and advocates.
The site is organized around a few recurring outputs:
- Signature reports such as The State of the Nation's Housing, America's Rental Housing, and Improving America's Housing, which provide broad annual or periodic assessments.
- Research tools and indicators, including the Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity (LIRA), which tracks near-term trends in home improvement spending.
- Blog posts and shorter research notes on topics like household growth, immigration's effect on housing demand, and unmet repair needs.
- Events and media mentions, including virtual sessions and coverage by outlets such as NPR and Marketplace.
A useful next step depends on what you need. If you want a broad market overview, start with The State of the Nation's Housing. If your interest is remodeling or repair, look at the LIRA tool and the center's home improvement research. If you are tracking affordability or rental conditions, America's Rental Housing is the more relevant report. For timely updates, the mailing list covers news, blog posts, and events.
As a comparison, JCHS differs from government statistical agencies that publish raw datasets, and from advocacy organizations that campaign for specific policies. Its role is closer to an academic research hub: it analyzes data and frames housing challenges, leaving direct service provision and lobbying to others. That makes it most valuable when you need credible context, trend analysis, and citable findings rather than immediate practical assistance with a housing problem.
For related official sources, see U.S. Census Bureau for housing and demographic data, and HUD USER for federal housing research and datasets.
How can I access the State of the Nation's Housing report?
The report is available directly from the Joint Center for Housing Studies website. Look for the "Signature Reports" section on the homepage, where The State of the Nation's Housing is listed; selecting it takes you to the report page, where you can read the findings online or download the PDF. The same site also hosts related signature reports such as America's Rental Housing and Improving America's Housing, plus a mailing list for updates when new editions are released.
Joint Center for Housing Studies
If you want the report alongside current context, the site's "Latest Research" and "In the Media" sections show recent blog posts and news coverage that interpret the same data. For a quick decision: use the report page itself if you need the full data and charts; use the blog and media items if you only need the headline trends.
What does the Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity (LIRA) predict for the remodeling market?
The Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity (LIRA) is the Joint Center for Housing Studies' short-term forecasting tool for U.S. home improvement and repair spending. Rather than measuring what has already been spent, it is designed to signal the direction of the remodeling market over the coming quarters—typically whether homeowner improvement spending is likely to accelerate, plateau or slow. It is a leading indicator, so its value is in anticipating turning points ahead of the published spending data.
On Joint Center for Housing Studies, LIRA sits alongside the Center's broader housing research program, including signature reports such as Improving America's Housing and The State of the Nation's Housing, plus research on remodeling industry structure and DIY-versus-professional spending shifts. That context matters: LIRA's forecast is best read together with the Center's analysis of why remodeling demand is changing.
H3 Who uses it, and how
- Remodeling contractors and suppliers: to plan capacity, inventory and hiring rather than reacting after demand moves.
- Lenders and investors: to gauge the near-term outlook for home equity lending and building-product demand.
- Policy and housing analysts: to connect remodeling trends to affordability, aging housing stock and repair needs.
H3 What to keep in mind LIRA tracks the market in aggregate, not your local market or your specific segment. A national forecast can diverge from conditions in a particular metro, and it speaks to the direction of spending rather than precise dollar levels. Treat it as one input among local permits, contractor backlogs and your own pipeline data.
A practical next step: check the latest LIRA release on the Center's site and read it alongside the most recent Improving America's Housing report, so you can pair the short-term signal with the longer-term drivers behind it.
How are baby boomers' aging and immigration trends affecting housing demand?
Baby boomers' aging tends to subtract from household formation as people downsize, move in with family, or enter care settings, while immigration tends to add households as newcomers form their own homes. The net effect on housing demand depends on which force is larger in a given market and period.
The Joint Center for Housing Studies frames both as forces acting on demand: its analysis of baby boomers describes aging as a "rising headwind" for housing demand, and its research on household growth notes that immigration declines are increasingly shaping that growth. In practical terms, an aging-heavy metro may see more turnover in owner-occupied stock and steadier rental demand from older renters, while a gateway metro with strong immigration sees more new renter households and pressure on lower-cost units.
What this means for different audiences
- Renters and first-time buyers: Expect competition to vary by market. Immigration-driven growth supports rental demand, especially at entry price points; aging supports turnover in existing homes, which can create buying opportunities but not necessarily affordable ones.
- Builders and remodelers: Aging households often need accessibility modifications, repairs, and maintenance rather than new construction; immigrant households often need larger or differently configured units. The Joint Center's remodeling research tracks these shifts in improvement spending.
- Local planners: Household projections should be run with migration assumptions made explicit, because immigration policy changes can move totals quickly, while aging is slower and more predictable.
A practical next step
If you are weighing a decision about a specific market, separate the two effects: look at net migration and household size alongside the age distribution of existing residents. A market can have strong immigration and still see weak overall demand if older households are dissolving faster than new ones form.
For ongoing data, the Joint Center publishes signature reports such as The State of the Nation's Housing and America's Rental Housing, plus a remodeling activity indicator, all available at Joint Center for Housing Studies.
Why are unmet home repairs leaving millions exposed to extreme indoor heat?
The Joint Center for Housing Studies ties the problem to inadequate maintenance rather than to cooling technology alone. When repairs are deferred—roofs, windows, insulation, weatherization, and especially air conditioning and ventilation systems—a home loses its ability to keep indoor temperatures safe. The center's research framing, "Unmet Repairs Leave Millions Exposed to Extreme Indoor Heat," points to a housing-quality gap: the households least able to pay for repairs are often the same ones least able to afford higher cooling bills or a temporary move during a heat wave.
Several mechanisms make this dangerous:
- Broken or absent cooling. A failed central air conditioner, a window unit that no longer works, or no unit at all leaves occupants with no way to bring down indoor temperatures during a multi-day heat event.
- Deferred envelope repairs. Damaged roofs, single-pane or leaking windows, and poor insulation let heat in and cool air out, so even working equipment struggles to keep up.
- Ventilation and moisture problems. Poor ventilation traps heat and humidity, raising the risk of heat illness indoors.
- Compounding affordability pressure. High energy costs can lead households to run cooling less, or not at all, even when the equipment works.
Who is most exposed
Older adults, renters in poorly maintained units, low-income homeowners, and people with chronic health conditions face the greatest risk. The center's work on aging and housing is relevant here: as the population of older adults grows, more people will spend hot days in homes they cannot afford to repair or cool. Renters may have limited power to force landlords to make repairs, while low-income owners may lack savings for a new air conditioner or a roof fix.
What to do with this
If you are assessing your own risk before a heat wave, check the cooling system and the building envelope now, not during an emergency. A practical next step: identify the single repair that most affects indoor temperature—often a non-working air conditioner, a failed window, or a roof leak—and pursue local weatherization, repair, or utility assistance programs before summer. For policymakers and program staff, the center's framing suggests that heat resilience and housing rehabilitation are the same policy problem, so repair funding and cooling assistance should be coordinated rather than treated as separate programs.
For the underlying research and reports, see Joint Center for Housing Studies.
How can I attend or watch upcoming JCHS housing research events?
The Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard runs its research events as free virtual webinars, and the site's "Upcoming Events" section is the main place to find them. Recent listings include sessions such as "Financing Cost-Rental Housing: A Low-Cost-of-Capital Approach to Supporting Below-Market Rents" and "The Full Cost of Homeownership: Maintenance, Replacement, and Housing Affordability," both scheduled from 12:15–1:15 pm ET and marked Virtual.
How to attend
- Check the "Upcoming Events" area on Joint Center for Housing Studies for the current schedule, dates and times.
- Click through to an individual event for its registration or access details; the listings themselves show date, time and format but not the join link.
- Events are listed in Eastern Time, so convert if you are elsewhere.
- If a session has passed, look for a recording or recap on the same event page or in the site's research and media sections.
Who this suits
These webinars fit housing researchers, policy analysts, planners, journalists and students who want findings and discussion without traveling. A practitioner weighing a remodeling or rental-housing question, for example, can watch a one-hour session during a lunch break and then read the related report.
Practical next step
If you want advance notice rather than checking the page, join the mailing list and select interests such as News, Blog or Events. That way new sessions and reports reach you directly. For deeper context before or after an event, the "Signature Reports" section includes titles like The State of the Nation's Housing, America's Rental Housing and Improving America's Housing.
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