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The US has a population of 329.5 million. Average household size is 2.51 people. So we need to house 131 million families - but the US already has 142 million housing units. The surplus is 3x the headline. What am I missing?

https://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-size-of-h...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/240267/number-of-housing...

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The market isn't perfect. The houses might not be where the demand is or the type/size needed and there will always be some unoccupied percentage due to moves, investments etc.

I would assume 10% unoccupied is the minimum needed.

Vacant units.

Which is to say, yeah, maybe we don't need to build tons more, but we do at minimum need to use what we have and we aren't.

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