The Unassuming Economist

On prices, rent, and mortgage:    

• Mortgage Rates Hold Steady After Early March Drop – NAHB
• FHFA’s National Mortgage Database: Outstanding Mortgage Rates, LTV and Credit Scores – Calculated Risk
• 82% of Outstanding Mortgage Debt Has a Sub-6% Rate – Realtor.com
• What Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ Tariff Moves Mean for Home Prices and Mortgage Rates – Realtor.com
• Freddie Mac House Price Index Increased in February; Up 3.4% Year-over-year. 7 of the 10 cities with largest price declines are in Florida! – Calculated Risk
• Breaking Down the Price of a New Home in the U.S. – Visual Capitalist
• California Home Prices May Drop Soon as Housing Market Flashes Warning, Real Estate CEO Says – Realtor.com
• Jackson Hole’s Housing Market Isn’t Coming Back Down to Earth Anytime Soon. Prices at the luxury level remain as high as ever, as those who bought property during Covid show no signs of selling – Wall Street Journal
• Housing Prices Are Pushing Down Payments to New Highs—See How Much More Homebuyers Are Paying – Realtor.com
• Down Payments Continue Upward, Hitting a Q4 Peak – Realtor.com
• Fannie and Freddie: Single Family Serious Delinquency Rates Unchanged in February. Fannie Mae Multi-Family Delinquency Rate Equals Highest Since 2011 (ex-Pandemic) – Calculated Risk

On sales, permits, starts, and supply:    

• Homebuilder inventory hits 2009 levels: These are the housing markets where you can find deals. In February 2025, the number of unsold completed new single-family homes in the U.S. hit the highest level since summer 2009. – Fast Company
• Moody’s: Q1 2025 Apartment Vacancy Rate Highest Since 2010; Office Vacancy Rate at Record High – Calculated Risk
• Manhattan Home Sales Soar as Buyers Seize on Mortgage Rate Dips – Bloomberg
• Soft Job Openings Estimate for Construction – NAHB
• Private Residential Construction Spending Rises in February – NAHB
• Manufactured Homes: An Alternative Means of Housing Supply – NAHB
• America’s housing crisis is solvable—if we choose to build – Fortune

On other developments:    

• Middle-Class Americans in Only These 20 States Can Afford an Average-Priced Home Where They Live – Realtor.com
• Housing market sees biggest home-flipping pullback since 2007. A new survey reveals how home flippers are moving forward in today’s affordability-constrained housing market. – Fast Company
• Hurricane Helene’s Impact on Housing in Western North Carolina – Richmond Fed
• Homeowners Are Sitting on $34.7 Trillion in Equity—but Mortgage Debt Is Growing – Realtor.com
• The Last Abundance Agenda. In the 1980s, Wall Street vowed to make housing more affordable through deregulation of housing finance. The result was the 2008 crisis. – The American Prospect
• Everyone is Moving to Florida. Walking you through my analysis of migration – Home Economics
• Will cheap housing lead to more babies? The connection between housing and fertility rates has a missing piece. – Vox
• Surveying Missing Middle Housing—Trends in the United States and Massachusetts – Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies 

From a paper by Joe Piacentini, Harley Frazis, Peter B. Meyer, Michael Schultz, and Leo Sveikauskas:

“This paper surveys economic literature largely from 2020 and 2021 on how the COVID-19 pandemic and responses to it affect U.S. income inequality. Established trends of growing inequality may continue roughly as before, involving new technologies, international trade, and the growth of “superstar” firms. Employment, earnings, and schooling were affected differently across demographic groups and occupations. The pandemic disrupted lower-paid, service sector employment most, disadvantaging women and lower income groups at least temporarily, and this may have scarring effects. Government policies implemented in response to the pandemic offset much of the effect on income. Higher-paid workers tend to gain more from continuing opportunities to telework. Less-advantaged students suffered greater educational setbacks from school closures. School and day care closures disrupted the work of many parents, particularly mothers. We conclude that the pandemic is likely to widen income inequality over the long run, because the lasting changes in work patterns, consumer demand, and production will benefit higher income groups and erode opportunities for some less advantaged groups. Telework has increased permanently. High-contact jobs and services may continue to face reduced demand and increased automation. School disruptions have been worse for lower-income students and are likely to have lingering negative effects, which may widen future inequality within more recent birth cohorts. The history of the 1918 flu shows that the effect of a pandemic on inequality in income, education, health, and wealth depends on the nature of the pandemic and on behavioral and policy responses.”

From a paper by Enoch Quaye, Fred A. Yamoah, Pratyush K. Patro, and Adolf Acquaye:

“Research indicates that some countries have achieved decoupling between economic activity
and environmental damage, even considering consumption. We question whether emissions
reductions from decoupling sufficiently mitigate climate change to meet Sustainable
Development Goal 13: Climate Action. A novel approach is used to model latent information in
GDP growth rates to predict country-level sustainable carbon emission rates. We propose a
latent variable model for the growth rate of the CO2 emissions-to-GDP ratio to understand the
dynamics needed to achieve sustainable carbon thresholds for the Net Zero target. We document
that while the unconditional average GDP per capita growth trends upward, the belief in
its persistence is declining. The parameter linking consumption-based emissions with GDP per
capita growth is statistically significant. It indicates a downward trend and confirms that economies
can grow without a proportional increase in emissions as technology advances and people
alter their behaviour. The findings highlight the importance of policies and technological innovation
in decoupling economic growth from consumption emissions. Furthermore, the latent
variable (which is easy to learn) persists and barely changes during the estimation period 2010
to 2018. We observe a decline between 2015 and 2018, despite remaining high overall.”

From a paper by Andrea Foschi, Christopher L. House, Christian Proebsting, and Linda L. Tesar:

“We examine the responsiveness of labor participation, unemployment and labor migration to
exogenous variations in labor demand. Our empirical approach considers four instruments
for regional labor demand commonly used in the literature. Empirically, we find that labor
migration is a significant margin of adjustment for all our instruments. Following an increase
in regional labor demand, the initial increase in employment is accounted for mainly through
a reduction in unemployment. Over time however, net labor in-migration becomes the dominant
factor contributing to increased regional employment. After 5 years, roughly 60 percent
of the increase in employment is explained by the change in population. Responses of labor
migration are strongest for individuals aged 20-35. Based on historical data back to the
1950s, we find no evidence of a decline in the elasticity of migration to changes in employment.”

From a paper by Xuecheng Fan, Zeshui Xu, Marinko Skare & Xinxin Wang:

“This study examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on unemployment dynamics, focusing on youth unemployment and gender-specific disparities across 20 European countries from 2013 to 2022. Using a panel structural vector autoregressive (PSVAR) model, the study analyzes the effects of the pandemic on total unemployment, youth unemployment (ages 15–24), and gender differences in unemployment rates. The results reveal that youth unemployment was disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 shock, with significant increases observed in countries with high pre-pandemic unemployment rates, such as Greece and Spain. Additionally, gender inequality in unemployment rates was exacerbated, particularly in countries like Greece, where women consistently faced higher unemployment rates than men throughout the observed period. The study also highlights the significant role of excess mortality during the pandemic, with countries experiencing higher COVID-19 mortality rates, such as Italy and Spain, also showing higher unemployment rates. These findings contribute to the understanding of how economic shocks, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, exacerbate the existing labor market inequalities, particularly for vulnerable demographic groups such as youth and women. The study calls for targeted policy interventions to address these disparities and promote a more inclusive recovery.”