With construction for the ongoing military buildup squeezing on the local housing market, the prospect of owning a home—or even just renting an apartment—remained out of reach for many Guam residents in 2024.
The sudden boom in population caused by military personnel, contractors, and H-2B workers spiked housing demand while on-base projects sucked up construction capacity, keeping prices high.
An estimated 52% of households were spending more than half of their gross income on housing costs alone in 2024, according to the Guam Housing and Urban Renewal Authority.
Members of the middle class are getting priced out of their old rentals and pushed into what was once low-income housing, according to GHURA.
Meanwhile, a number of adult residents told the Pacific Daily News that housing and utility costs have been so high, they decided to move back in with family members.
An estimated 6,650 households would like to move into their own space, but can’t afford to, according to GHURA.
Median single-family home prices hit $420,000 in the third quarter of 2024, nearly double the $213,000 median cost a decade ago, in 2014.
That $420,000 figure is slightly lower than the $445,000 peak median home price at the tail end 2022—but experts say it’s likely due to a lack of quality housing, and people getting priced out of the market entirely, with no fall in housing demand.
Getting into the rental market is expected to stay pricey. GHURA set fair market rent for a studio apartment moving into 2025 at $1,222 a month.
Several housing projects were announced in 2024, but many fell out of reach of the average resident.
Houses in the new 72-unit Songsong Hills subdivision in Yigo will go for between $600,000 and $700,000 each, while the upscale The Palisades subdivision in Tiyan could sell cliffside quarter-acre lots at as high as $900,000 to $1 million for the land alone.
Alternative construction methods were the name of the game for ventures seeking to deliver lower cost housing, but most are just at the beginning of the process.
Developer J524 Development LLC plans to build a Yigo subdivision with 80 three-bedroom homes that will start at $350,000, using pour-in place aluminum casts and no-rebar construction to quickly build concrete structures.
Meanwhile, one startup, Starsand Technologies, looked to crowdfund concrete 3D printing technology for the island, which could potentially “print” homes for 15% to 30% lower than current costs.
Even the Department of Defense is looking at new tech alternatives to rebar and concrete construction, with the price to build one single family home for the Navy reportedly hitting between $2.5 million and $3 million.
The housing crisis isn’t just an issue for locals, with the shortage of rentals likely slowing the flow of H-2B workers needed to keep up with military construction, according to the Guam Department of Labor.
GDOL approved up to 9,000 H-2B visas as of November, but just 5,549 of those workers had actually touched down on the island.
Experts have reported as many as 300 houses or apartments are now being used as H-2B housing, due to the shortage of available space in temporary worker barracks.
The Guam Land Use Commission in 2024 approved applications for the construction of several new worker barracks, including a 600-person barracks in Dededo for Pacific Rim.
H-2B numbers are anticipated to grow up to as many as 12,000 in the next four to five years.
GHURA has predicted that to keep up with current housing demand, 9,908 new housing units would need to be built by next year.