Though the COVID-19 pandemic has caused housing demand to soar in the past year, contractors are facing major labor and supply shortages that are delaying home construction.
Americans are looking for more indoor space while adapting to work-from-home orders and social distancing mandates, but extensive backlogs for raw materials and a waning workforce are slowing the rate of home building across the country, reports the Columbia Missourian.
While homeowners and homebuyers have lined up to remodel existing homes or purchase new ones, they have been forced to wait for months to start and finish projects, in part because the supply of housing isn’t catching up. That shortage predates the pandemic, but it has grown since the onset of COVID-19.
There was already a supply shortage of 3.84 million homes at the beginning of 2019, according to Realtor.com. The supply deficit increased to 5.24 million by June 2021, a jump of 36.4% in two years.
While skilled labor shortages are making it harder to build and renovate homes, wait times for materials are also causing delays. The housing supply chain has been hit hard by the pandemic and labor shortages because it is interconnected with a wide range of industries and products.
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