MetroABQ Blog

Why are there so few homes available?The financial Great Recession of 2008 was devastating to everyone. Especially hard-hit were first-time homebuyers & home builders. Hundreds of new home construction companies went out of business across the country & building new homes in most places morphed from what was once a roaring industry, into more of a building trickle.

Flash forward 14 years & the pendulum has already swung the other way: lack of building for over a decade has created housing shortages the likes of which haven't been seen in decades. Along came the society-changing Covid virus, & suddenly migration challenges & housing shortfalls are reshaping whole communities.

Also during that same time, we've matured in all sorts of fabulous ways as a metropolitan city, which in turn attracts more folks who want to migrate here to share in that great adventure...which adds to the strain on our housing stock.

‍What to do? Build more houses...And we are. Across the Metro, thousands of workers are furiously crafting the next generation of homes for the current round of new home-buyers. Drive through any quadrant of the city & you'll see all kinds of residences being built, from large apartment complexes covering football fields & whole 100+ home residential neighborhoods popping up after only a few months, to one-house-at-a-time custom builders & other creative planners infilling the unused spaces in established neighborhoods. It seems Albuquerque is working diligently to make more room for many living styles...

Building luxurious, single-family modern-mansion-style homes on the edge of the West Side volcanic escarpment has become a thing; the framed home above is an example. The home under construction lives on the top of the Petroglyph National Monument's volcanic escarpment, & overlooks the new 60-acreGreen Space called La Cuentista. Here's an image from below the new home, from in the La Cuentista Open Space. The image below isa completed model home nearby, from Sun Valley Custom Homes, a builder of note in the Kimmick/Paseo del Norte building corridor along the volcanic escarpment.