The Unassuming Economist

On prices, rent, and mortgage:    

• US Mortgage Rates Surge by Most in a Year as Tariffs Hit Markets – Bloomberg
• US Mortgage Rates Rise Again, Reach Highest Since Mid-February – Bloomberg
• Zillow turns full-blown housing market bear—just look at its new forecast. Zillow projects that U.S. home prices will fall 1.7% between March 2025 and March 2026. Last month, Zillow economists still thought prices would rise this year. – Fast Company
• Home Price Growth Remains Steady in First Quarter – Fannie Mae
• National Home Price Appreciation (HPA) Index—March 2025 – AEI
• Housing market shift: 60 major markets are now seeing falling home prices. Among the 300 largest metro-area housing markets, 60 are seeing falling home prices on a year-over-year basis, according to ResiClub’s monthly analysis. – Fast Company
• Cape Cod Sounds Alarm on Housing Crisis Amid Skyrocketing Home Prices – Realtor.com
• Americans Are Migrating Back to the Heartland States—and It’s Causing Home Prices To Spike in These 5 Cities – Realtor.com
• March 2025 Rental Report: Rents Continue To Fall, but Tariffs on Imported Steel and Aluminum Could Exert Upward Pressure on Prices – Realtor.com  
• Profit Margins on Home Sales Continue to Drop in First Quarter – ATTOM

On sales, permits, starts, and supply:    

• U.S. Homes Are Selling at the Slowest Pace in 6 Years – Redfin
• Continued Gains Projected for Remodeling Amid Economic Uncertainty – Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies
• America’s housing shortage by the numbers – The Hill
• US single-family housing starts tumble to an eight-month low in March – Reuters
• The Home-Building Season Is Starting Off Badly, New Data Shows. Economic uncertainty and rising material costs from tariffs darken the outlook for newly built homes – Wall Street Journal
• B.C. group warns that softwood tariffs could lead to soaring U.S. rebuilding costs – The Globe and Mail
• Single-Family Home Construction Plunges as Builders Grapple With Higher Costs and Weak Demand – Realtor.com
• U.S. Homes Are Selling at the Slowest Pace in 6 Years – Redfin 
• California Home Sales Up 4.9% YoY in March; 4th Look at Local Housing Markets – Calculated Risk
• Lawler: Early Read on Existing Home Sales in March – Calculated Risk
• NMHC on Apartments: Market conditions Tightened in Q1 pre-Tariffs. Leading indicator for Rents and Apartment Vacancies turned slightly positive in Q1, before Tariff Announcement – Calculated Risk
• Build, Baby, Build: Unshackling Homeowners and Developers from Local Red Tape – New America
• New Home Sales Increase to 724,000 Annual Rate in March. Median New Home Price is Down 12% from the Peak due to Change in Mix – Calculated Risk
• New Home Sales Rise in March – NAHB
• New-Home Sales Make a Surprising Jump Led by Affordable Inventory – Realtor.com
• The Sun Belt housing market is so weak the largest U.S. homebuilder pulls back. D.R. Horton is ramping up concessions in regional housing markets—particularly in pockets of Florida and Texas where active inventory has climbed the most. – Fast Company
• See How Your State Ranks on the New Realtor.com Report Card for Homebuilding and Affordability – Realtor.com

On impact of tariffs on housing:

• US labor market stable; tariffs depress single-family homebuilding – Reuters

On other developments:    

• Booming Houston. What’s driving it? – Home Economics
• 9 Free Ways to Increase Arizona Home Ownership. What Arizona can do to help stabilize house prices, which would increase Arizona home ownership, family wealth, and economic growth, all for FREE. – Real Estate Decoded
• One map shows the affordable housing gap for low-income renters across the US – Business Insider
• Housing and Demographics – Calculated Risk
• White House Eyes Overhaul of Federal Housing Aid to the Poor. The Trump administration has considered sharply curtailing vouchers as part of its budget for the 2026 fiscal year. – New York Times
• Trump Administration Aims to Sell Housing Department Headquarters. The building has been added to a list of properties that the administration says it is trying to offload in order to eliminate waste. – New York Times
• Low-Income Renters Can’t Get the Housing Vouchers They Need. A fraction of rent-burdened households receive Section 8 vouchers — and they may not even be able to use them. – New York Times
• As Trump jettisons its staff, HUD puts its D.C. headquarters up for sale – NPR
• How is the climate crisis affecting affordable housing? Housing costs all over the world are skyrocketing, and climate change-driven disasters are only making it worse. Could city planning and risk reduction help? – DW
• Why Florida’s Condo Owners Are So Desperate to Sell. Insurance increases, special assessments and limited financing options have elevated costs beyond what many can bear – Wall Street Journal
• Florida Homeowners Are in Crisis. Lawmakers Want To Offer Tax Relief as a Solution – Realtor.com
• A house divided by housing – Politico
• California Housing Bills Face Crucial Hearing Today. Bills designed to allow more starter homes and apartments near transit face an uncertain future in the state Senate’s housing committee. – Reason
• The Rooftop: Innovative Ideas to Solve the Housing Crisis. A new blog and multimedia series hosted by New America, shaped by its contributors – New America 
• The Future of Fair Housing in America: A Q&A with Chiraag Bains – New America 

From a paper by Domingo Rodríguez Benavides, Nancy Muller Durán, and Ignacio Perrotini Hernández:

“The relationship between fluctuations of the unemployment rate and the growth rate of output (Okun’s Law) in Mexico, the United States (US) and Canada during the period 2006-2019 is dealt with in the present paper. We posit the hypothesis that cyclical shocks can permanently affect structural unemployment. A non-linear autorregresive distributive lag (NARDL) model is displayed to test the assumption of symmetric effects in Okun´s Law analysis. Our econometric results suggest that while in the US and Canada there is evidence of an asymmetric Okun’s Law in the short run and the long-term, respectively, for the case of Mexico no such evidence exists. These discrepancies speak to the relevance of looking at the existence of non- linear effects in Okun´s Law. The accurate identification of such effects can shed light for both labour market reforms and stabilization policy design.”

From a paper by Virender Kumar, Simran:

“Globalization in the form of increased trade, technological advancements, and capital flows has spurred economic growth and lifted millions out of poverty across Asia, but these advantages have not been equally distributed, leading to income inequality. While previous research has highlighted globalization’s role in income inequality, little attention has been given to the moderating role of financial development. As Asian economies become more integrated into the global system, understanding how financial development mediates effects of globalization on income disparity has become crucial for policymakers, researchers, and practitioners. This study empirically investigates how financial development shapes the impact of globalization (trade, technological, and financial) on income inequality in Asian countries. Using a fixed effect panel data model with data for 22 Asian countries, we show that while all three modes of globalization—trade, technological and financial—aggravate the income gap, the influence of these types of globalization on income inequality is reduced when financial development takes place. In particular, the study finds that if a country is financially developed, the net effect of all types of globalization on income inequality is negative, meaning that in a financially developed country, globalization may actually help reduce income inequality. In response to these findings, we suggest policy recommendations, including increasing access to banking services and promoting financial literacy for financial inclusion, prioritizing sectors with high job creation potential, and providing reskilling support for globalization.”

From a paper by Mahdi Shahrazi, Saman Ghaderi & Bahram Sanginabadi:

“The potential influence of global commodity prices on consumer price inflation has been a concern of researchers and policymakers for decades. Even though a body of literature has investigated such connections, the results are mixed. This study uses a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model to investigate the impact of global commodity prices on Iran’s inflation over the 2009:1-2018:11 period. We have included commodity price, exchange rate, and stock returns as explanatory variables in our model. Based on the findings of our long-run multiplier matrix the response of inflation to the commodity price shocks is positive and statistically significant. In other words, global commodity prices increase Iranian inflation. Also, the results suggest that the explanatory power of commodity price shocks in inflation fluctuations is higher than those of exchange rate and stock returns in the long run.”

From a paper by Danijela Lazović Vuković, and Jože P. Damijan:

“This paper studies the drivers of rising income inequality in OECD countries between 1980 and 2018. By testing Milanovic’s TOP hypothesis in our sample, we measure the extent to which these distributional outcomes have been driven by either technological progress or globalization and the extent to which they have been influenced or mitigated by policy choices. The results of our empirical analysis provide the basis for confirming the TOP hypothesis. We find evidence that a 10 percent increase in trade openness, financial globalization, and technological progress is on average associated with a 0.4 percent, 0.3 percent, and 0.9 percent change in market inequality, respectively. At the same time, policies such as public expenditure on education, employment protection legislation and direct income taxes promote a more equal distribution. Our most notable finding, however, is that policies not only have a direct equalizing effect, but also mitigate the effects of globalization and technological progress on income inequality. The results of our study suggest that there are reasonable alternatives to anti-globalization strategies and that redistributive and labor market policies can be tailored to control inequality in the era of globalization and technology.”