The total area of single-family homes in the U.S. will shrink by nearly 4 billion square feet by 2021, according to a new report by Boulder, Colo.-based Pike Research.
Overall, according to Pike Research, the U.S. residential building stock will grow from 264.3 billion square feet in 2011 to 280.1 billion square feet in 2021. In comparison, that growth will be dwarfed by the expansion in residential building stock in some countries in Asia Pacific – particularly China, where residential buildings will grow by 60% in the next decade, reaching more than 600 billion square feet by 2021.
‘For the first time since World War II, the United States is experiencing increased levels of urbanization,’ says Eric Bloom, senior research analyst at Pike Research. ‘As more people move into cities, they tend to occupy apartments, condominiums, and other attached multi-unit housing types. By 2021, over one-fourth of the residential stock of the U.S. will be in multi-unit residential buildings.’