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By Jordyn Herman/Bridge Michigan | August 31, 2026 Email This Subscribe to Newsletter Article 0 Comments 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.” 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. 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 housing, 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. ___ This story was originally published by Bridge Michigan and distributed through a partnership with The
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