A common claim from supply truthers is that homes per capita is at all time highs, so there can’t be a supply crisis. For some number of reasons, a lot of people are just resistant to the supply story. To someone seeking anti-supply talking points, it seems like a really good poi … | Continue reading
Below the paywall, an update on this month’s residential construction numbers from a perspective you won’t get elsewhere. | Continue reading
With notes on inflation | Continue reading
At the end of my Liberal Currents piece, I wrote, “Before 2008, even at the bottom of our deepest recessions, America never produced fewer new homes per capita than we produce today.” And, I wrote about how a city with just moderate growth of - say 1% annual population growth - w … | Continue reading
I have a new article up at Liberal Currents. Here’s how it starts: The policy vicious cycle began in the early twentieth century when major American cities started to experiment with local zoning ordinances. The vicious cycle was codified in the 1926 Supreme Court decision, | Continue reading
In the previous post, I laid out the basic math of what new homes are being built and where new homes might come from. Cyclically Neutral Construction Associated with Stable Real Rents Details are below the paywall for subscribers. | Continue reading
The next post after this will be for subscribers. In it I will add detail and charts to develop this summary. The American housing market has two ways forward: 1) An extended building boom, which may slowly reverse the debilitating housing costs that have undermined our economy a … | Continue reading
One of the supply-skeptic positions I see is that housing isn’t really that much of an issue. It’s just that the economy is broken. Capitalism is creating income inequality, and so, of course the “have nots” can’t afford housing. That’s just one of many symptoms of the broader pr … | Continue reading
I was reading the latest ResiClub post that ends: “Big picture: U.S. home prices have been in a period of sideways movement following the 2022 mortgage rate shock. However, under the surface, some markets have seen some give up while others continue to climb at an elevated pace.” | Continue reading
For subscribers, I am going to go into a little more depth about home sales and new home inventory, and why widespread misunderstandings about our unusual context presents an investment opportunity for those with confidence and patience. First, just a quick and dirty review of ho … | Continue reading
Before I get into this month’s residential sales update, I’d like to point out something that I think is pretty extraordinary. I have written about this a bit before. Figure 1 is from my paper revisiting the factors that changed home prices from 2002 to 2010. The point of this ch … | Continue reading
Last week, the Arizona Republic printed an op-ed I wrote about the importance of passing the reforms currently being advanced through the state legislature. The op-Ed describes how individual cities get into a prisoners dilemma where if one city implements exclusionary policies, … | Continue reading
Inflation is in an interesting spot. It’s run a little hot for the past few months. This has led to concerns that the excessive inflation of 2021 and 2022 is around the corner. That’s highly unlikely for a number of reasons. First, the final surge of inflation in early 2022 was t … | Continue reading
Unfortunately, I would say that the potential California supply miracle I had hoped to have seen starting back in 2022 has all but completely dissipated. Sacramento shows some hope, but really that’s about it. Figure 1 shows the cyclical changes and the supply-related changes in … | Continue reading
It will be interesting to see how the Fed meeting goes this week. I’m with the market monetarists that targeting NGDP growth would be the best method for communicating monetary policy, and I think using short term interest rates to target inflation is a horrible system. | Continue reading
Sorry to flood your in-boxes. Another comment required a new post so I could paste another chart in response. (Original post. First Follow-up.) The comment was a question about unit types. This is single-family units and multi-family units among various types of cities. (Closed A … | Continue reading
Here is another chart, similar to Figure 1 from the previous post. The y-axis is still the change in real income per capita. I have annualized it here. And the x-axis is now annual population growth instead of annual housing permits per capita. I think this provides a visual way … | Continue reading
A quick note today on agglomeration economies. I have written here and there about it. There seems to be a tendency among economists to emphasize the productivity of cities as a reason for expensive housing. Like, the thing that makes our time different than previous eras is that … | Continue reading
Here I want to build on the post about mortgage affordability vs. rent affordability, on the point that the clampdown on mortgage lending in 2008 necessarily led to unprecedented rent inflation. Skeptics and opponents of federal mortgage agencies and the Fed attribute high home p … | Continue reading
In this post I am going to revisit a factoid from the financial crisis that is one of the many points at odds with conventional wisdom. And, it ties in to my counterintuitive points about mortgage access and housing affordability. To recap: There was a subprime/Alt. A credit boom … | Continue reading
Lance Lambert reported on a couple of different pieces of housing analytics that make for an interesting pairing, when you put on the EHT-colored glasses and consider all the implications of what they are saying. First, he reported on Bank of America analysis: | Continue reading
Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Atlanta: Three Different Housing Stories | Continue reading