Housing trends nationally and locally are shifting from single family homes to multi-unit housing , adapting to more childless couples, singles and single-parent households, writes Evan Brandt for mainlinemedianews.com.

Households headed by married parents dropped from 25 million to 23.7 million between 1980 and 2017.

During the same period, singles with no children rose by 93 percent from 18.3 million to 35.3 million.

Married couples with no children, including empty-nesters, rose 54 percent from 24.1 million to 37.1 million.

As a result, developers are building more and more multi-unit housing in the area, according to a study by the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission now nearing completion.

The number of multi-family housing units built in the nine-county region, including Delaware County, rose from 119 in In 1993 to 5,756 in 2017, an increase of nearly 5,000 percent.

Delaware County is home to 27,884 multi-unit rentals.

The municipalities with the most multi-unit housing are Upper Darby, with 6,520; Hamilton, Trenton and Vorhees, New Jersey with 6,301; 6,246 and 3,226 respectively.

Many associate apartment construction with lower-income families, but there has actually been a steady increase in market-rate and luxury apartment construction in the Philadelphia metro area.

Read more about these regional housing trends here.

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