This paper provides the first systematic empirical assessment of the pace at which housing investment has responded to rising demand from urbanization. The assessment used National Accounts Statistics to build a data set of residential housing investments for more than 90 countries. The data set explicitly accounts for investment by households, the government, and the private sector. The analysis finds that housing investment follows an S-shaped trajectory taking off around a per capita GDP of about $3,000 (US$2005) and tapering down at a per capita GDP of around $36,000 (US$2005). The analysis also finds that between 2001 and 2011, housing investment in low-income economies averaged 4.56 percent of gross domestic product and 9.12 percent in upper-middle-income economies.