Fynsa
According to estimates based on CASEN and the Chilean Chamber of Construction (CChC), the housing deficit currently exceeds 600,000 homes, a figure that increases when considering households living in overcrowded conditions, with relatives, or in uninhabitable homes. This deficit affects nearly 2 million people, reflecting a significant gap between housing needs and the market's capacity to respond.
One of the most stressed groups is the youth segment. The sustained increase in housing prices, higher down payment requirements, and more restrictive credit conditions have displaced access to home ownership, even for households with formal incomes and monthly payment capacity. The 2024 Census confirms this trend: the proportion of renting households stands at 26.2%, while the homeownership rate continues to decline, especially among young households and first-time buyers.
At the same time, the most vulnerable segments face more critical expressions of the deficit. The national registry of camps for 2024–2025 records more than 1,400 settlements, home to over 120,000 families, showing that a significant portion of housing demand is currently being met outside the formal market.
These dynamics not only have social consequences, but also send clear signals about the evolution of housing demand. From an urban and economic perspective, they put pressure on existing infrastructure, deepen territorial segregation, and reinforce a structural demand for housing solutions, opening up spaces for new models of real estate development and management.
For the real estate market, this scenario poses obvious challenges, but also clear signals. The persistence of the deficit, together with the difficulty of accessing property for large segments of the population, reinforces the appeal of models geared toward residential income, well-located projects, efficient typologies, and active asset management. Likewise, for segments where the private market cannot achieve viability on its own, public-private partnership schemes appear to be an important tool for unlocking projects, combining scale, stability, and reduced uncertainty.
Looking ahead to the coming years, the market mainly expects certainty: clear rules, predictable processes, and stable frameworks that allow risks to be modeled over long-term horizons. In this context, specific incentives—both for real estate development and for demand—play an important role, especially in making projects viable in segments with tighter margins or in facilitating access to housing. However, their effectiveness depends largely on whether they are accompanied by regulatory clarity and a reduction in operational friction, which are key elements for real estate investment to be deployed in a sustained and long-term manner.
The housing crisis is not only an unresolved social challenge, but also a structural sign of changes in housing demand, and an invitation to rethink how real estate development can adapt to a new demographic, economic, and urban reality.
Sebastián Dourthé
Real Estate Funds Analyst, Fynsa AGF
