As high-tech manufacturing plants are lured to Georgia, affordable housing for workers is emerging as a key challenge.

The buying frenzy of a year ago is long gone. Home buyers have pulled away, sellers are holding back, and the whole housing market is locked in a deep freeze.

It's harder to afford homeownership than it's been in decades as a steep run-up in both prices during the pandemic and more recently interest rates hit buyers from both sides.

Thursday's GDP report shows the U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of 2.6% in July, August and September, after shrinking in the first half of the year.

The highest rates in 20 years are dashing the dreams of some would-be homebuyers. Others stretch to buy but spend close to $1,000 a month more in monthly payments for a typical house.

Kia’s assembly plant in West Point opened in 2008 with more than enough workers available to produce the first cars. Now, it’s become much harder to fill the 500 new jobs needed to get a new compact SUV off the assembly line.

With mortgage rates up sharply, many more homebuyers are turning to adjustable rate loans. These can be more affordable, at least at first. But they come with a big risk. Is it worth it?

The U.S. has a home shortage, but builders may be slowing instead of increasing construction because of worries that the homes won't be sold.

With a historic shortage of homes for sale, investors making cash offers are pushing first-time homebuyers out of the market.

For first time homebuyers it was one of the hardest years ever to afford a house. But homeowners saw tremendous gains in housing wealth.

Lots of speculators are jockeying to get in on the hot market. Sometime they call homeowners multiple times a day. It can be an invasive nuisance, or worse.

The COVID-19 pandemic is sparking an unprecedented boom in housing sales and remodeling across the country as many Americans seek more space in which to live, work and learn at home. The historic levels of consumer demand over the last year has pushed finished lumber prices to all-time highs and Georgia’s massive timber industry that employs hundreds of thousands of people is struggling to adjust. The latest Georgia Today podcast with guest Ryan Dezember, a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, explores the lumber boom's impact on the state’s critical timber industry and its growers, and what all this could mean for home prices. 

The pandemic has made the housing market even tighter in the mountain West, where first-time buyers are trying to decide whether this is just the future or a bubble headed eventually for a bust.

It's not only low interest rates pushing up prices to record highs. A historic lack of homes for sale is a big part of it too. And it's making homeownership unaffordable for too many people.

One America is living in a housing boom. The other needs support from the government or family for an affordable place to live.