Fayette County must produce 22,780 additional housing units in the next eight years to fully meet the demand of a projected influx of 40,000 new residents by 2025, according to a new housing demand study. The link to the full and final report is found below.
The report is sponsored by Fayette Alliance, homebuilders, realtors and various local government agencies including Fayette County Property Valuation Administrator, David O’Neill, who jointly issued an executive summary in May.
Based on recent buying trends and consumer polling, projected housing demand includes the need for 15,160 new single-family detached houses, 6,275 apartments and 1,345 condominiums and “other” units by 2025 or nearly 3,000 new housing units per year, which would require more than doubling current production levels.
Although the study stops short of making pricing and economic predictions, “it tells me that continued failure to keep pace with demand will drive up housing costs and place the heaviest burden on those at lower incomes,” said O’Neill. “The poor, working class and millennials are increasingly looking to surrounding counties for better affordability. Jessamine, Madison and Scott counties are growing faster than Fayette, especially Scott by a factor of 2 ½ to 1. “
“The shortage of housing is also driving homebuyers and investors into previously overlooked neighborhoods in and around Lexington’s urban core, resulting in the negative effects of gentrification including displacement, increased housing prices and a reduction in the number of affordable housing units. ”
“As a community we have a duty to address these complex and interrelated issues in the 2018 Comprehensive Plan update,” O’Neill continued, “regardless of whether we increase the availability of buildable land through expansion of the urban service area, we must profoundly and rapidly improve our strategy for incentivizing and increasing infill, redevelopment and urban density. But as we’ve seen, urban infill and redevelopment comes at a cost – any discussion of expansion should be accompanied by guarantees of a net increase in the number of affordable housing units and improved housing affordability in general.”
For weekly and monthly sales summaries and detailed property information including real-time sales data visit www.FayettePVA.com. For more information or questions, contact Fayette County PVA David O’Neill at david.oneill@ky.gov or call (859) 247-2722.
