Michigan houses are old and getting older. It’s a ‘huge problem’ for state

Michigan’s housing stock is old, with roughly six in 10 owner-occupied homes being built in or before the 1970s
Aging housing stock can pose a financial barrier for especially first-time homebuyers, who now average 40 years old
Experts say it’s a problem for the state as officials work to address an ongoing housing shortage

LANSING — When the typical Michigan home was built, Richard Nixon was president, US forces were withdrawing from Vietnam and “The Exorcist” would become the year’s highest-grossing film.

While pop culture has changed dramatically since 1973, much of the state’s housing stock has stayed the same.

Roughly 60% of occupied Michigan homes — about 2.5 million units, owned or rented — were built in or before the 1970s, and the median home in the state is significantly older than the nation as a whole. Much of the aging housing stock is clustered around major cities like Detroit and Grand Rapids, though older homes exist in pockets all across the state.

As officials try to address an ongoing housing crisis, the age of existing Michigan homes will be “a huge problem” to contend with in the coming years, said Dawn Crandall of the Home Builders Association of Michigan.

With age comes issues, she noted.

“Do people want to walk in and then invest that kind of money to remodel a home?” Crandall said. “To buy an older home is not necessarily cheap.”

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Aging water heaters, disintegrating shingles and cracking foundations — to say nothing of even older homes with asbestos tile, lead-based paint or knob-and-tube electrical wiring — can all be financial barriers to entry for first-time homebuyers, whose median age climbed to the highest it’s ever been last year, 40, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Michigan lawmakers have proposed bills to reform the state’s zoning laws in a bid to spur more and faster home building. But the measures have not passed, meaning the state’s next governor may inherit an ongoing debate.

Democrat Jocelyn Benson and Republican John James both say they have ideas on how to make housing more affordable, though neither has laid out specific plans to address challenges that come with old homes.

Aging housing stock is a “reasonably serious” issue that people “should probably have on their mind,” said David Allen, who manages the Office of Market Research at the Michigan State Housing Development Authority, or MSHDA.

“It’s important to make sure that those homes are still available for use,” he added. “A lot of them aren’t anywhere near functionally obsolete.”

The scope of the problem

There is no technical definition of “old housing,” but many experts consider a house old after 30 years — the typical time it would take for a homeowner to need a new roof or other major repairs. The National Register of Historic Places sets the bar at 50 years.

By either measure, Michigan is old, with a median housing age of 53 years.

That’s eight years older than the national median of 45 years, though Michigan is comparable to Midwest neighbors like Ohio and Illinois. National homebuilding statistics indicate housing is youngest around the Sun Belt region and oldest in the northeastern part of the country.

Michigan offers tax credits to preserve historic homes but many older homes don’t qualify. The state also offers various first-time homebuyer and home-repair programs — including one aimed specifically at improving energy efficiency by replacing old windows, furnaces and roofs.

Elsewhere, Minnesota offers various home improvement loans and forgives them for its lowest-income residents. Maryland’s Housing Rehabilitation Program offers grant funding, and Indiana helps local communities establish their own home repair programs.

Experts say there’s no single reason why Michigan’s housing stock is older than the national median, but they note the state was disproportionately impacted by the Great Recession — due to its ties to the auto industry — which caused homebuilding to effectively stall for years.

Data from the Home Builders Association of Michigan show developers secured permits to construct 54,000 single-family homes in 2005. By 2009, that number had dropped to just 6,900, which Crandall attributed to both the recession and an explosion of homebuilding in the South after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

“That kinda was like our personal Katrina” for the housing industry, Crandall said, noting that builders went south for work to rebuild in the aftermath of the storm “and none of them came back” due to Michigan’s stagnant recession economy.

A recent report from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies also highlighted a “prolonged period of underbuilding during the Great Recession” nationally, which meant that “far fewer new homes were added to the stock compared to previous decades.”

That same report also found that one in four US homeowners lives in a home built before 1960 — and that many of those same homeowners are struggling to keep up with maintenance and repair costs, relative to homeowners with houses built between 2010 and 2023.

Homes being constructed in Lansing, Michigan. — Michigan’s rate of homebuilding dropped dramatically during the late 2000’s Great Recession, partly leading to the large quantity of aged housing stock today, but is starting to pick up again after years of underbuilding. (Jordyn Hermani/Bridge Michigan)

Government in action

Michigan first implemented a statewide housing plan in 2022 to address an ongoing shortage. At the time, officials estimated Michigan was short around 190,000 housing units to meet demand. Today that number sits closer to 97,000 homes, according to the state housing development authority.

As part of that building effort, the authority and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration have identified ways to speed up the process further.

Those include repealing certain building regulations and adding a new state-level tax credit. While a few regulation repeals have been signed into law, as has the tax credit, the broader zoning reform effort has stalled amid resistance from some local governments.

Whoever wins Michigan’s next gubernatorial election, James or Benson, they’ll need to bring a “political will to work in a bipartisan fashion” if they actually hope to address Michigan’s housing shortage, Crandall said.

James, in a statement to Bridge, said the state’s aging housing stock is proof that “we need to make it easier and more affordable to build new homes.” At the federal level, James has also proposed legislation to reform what he called “costly green building codes” overseen by the Department of Energy.

“By cutting unnecessary regulations and lowering the cost of construction, we can increase housing supply and begin replacing aging homes and infrastructure across our state,” he said.

James also stressed the need to find a balance between “the need for workforce housing with property owners’ rights to offer short-term rentals.”

Benson, meanwhile, said she’d focus on trying to lower the cost of housing, “both by making it easier and faster to build more homes and by investing in the homes we already have.”

Investments, she added, would include streamlining permitting, modernizing aging water infrastructure “to remove old and potentially dangerous pipes,” and helping families with weatherization “so that people can afford to stay in the homes they already have.”

She didn’t explicitly address the issue of aging infrastructure, instead saying that housing costs have increased due to federal tariffs adding to the cost of lumber and building materials.

In March, Benson unveiled a housing affordability plan that proposes tax breaks for down payments, a new tax on short-term rentals like Airbnbs and a plan to block big investment firms from buying up Michigan homes.