The Present
The present tense of housing is a set of official datasets: UN-Habitat adequacy estimates, OECD affordability measures, and national construction series.
If you only follow housing through headlines, the present feels like a mood: everything is unaffordable, everywhere, always. Official statistics are less dramatic and more useful. They force a question this publication keeps asking: what was measured, for which people, in which place, in which period?
UN-Habitat's 2024 materials state that 2.8 billion people lack access to adequate housing, that 1.1 billion live in informal settlements and slums, and that on the order of 96,000 new units a day would be required to meet adequate-housing needs by 2030. That last figure is a need estimate, not a construction census.
Across OECD countries, real house prices rose by more than 40% over the past decade on average. One in three low-income tenant households spend more than 40% of disposable income on rent. In some countries, including the United States, more than half do.
National series should stay national. The UK's official average house price was £273,000 in July 2026. Canada's CMHC six-month starts trend was 244,149 in August 2026, while the same agency says 417,000 to 469,000 annual starts would be needed to restore pre-pandemic affordability by 2036. Those numbers are not averaged into a world median here.
Read global adequacy numbers globally. Read OECD indices as OECD indices. Then open the essay for the method, and Data for the charts.
Each figure carries a geography, period, and named source. None of these is a global median home price.
People lacking adequate housing
2.8 billion
people
UN-Habitat 2024 Annual Report. 'Adequate housing' is a rights-based concept, not a single dwelling-unit count. Earlier UN-Habitat papers have used a range of 1.6–3 billion.
New units needed per day to 2030
96,000
housing units per day
UN-Habitat estimate of the production pace required to meet adequate-housing needs by 2030. This is a need estimate, not observed construction.
OECD real house prices vs. a decade earlier
+40%
real price change, OECD average
OECD states that real house prices increased by over 40% over the past decade on average across the OECD. This is an average of member countries, not a global median price.
Low-income OECD tenants overburdened
1 in 3
share of low-income tenant households
OECD: on average, one in three low-income tenant households spend over 40% of disposable income on rent. Overburden is higher than half in some countries, including the United States.
