The Unassuming Economist

On prices, rent, and mortgage:    

• Rent collections are down in New York — and no one’s sure why. The issue has exposed thorny questions for the city’s affordable housing sector. – Politico
• Landlords Win in Closely Watched Massachusetts Rent-Control Fight. The state is at the forefront of a national debate over how to manage skyrocketing housing costs – Wall Street Journal

On sales, permits, starts, and supply:     

• Structural Demand Outpacing Supply: Jobs-to-Permits Ratios Highlight Housing Gap – NAHB
• Inventory will Tell the Tale – Calculated Risk
• New Home Sales Decrease to 580,000 Annual Rate in May. Median New Home Price is Down 8% from the Peak due to Change in Mix – Calculated Risk
• Affordability Concerns Push New Home Sales Lower in May – NAHB
• U.S. Housing: ROAD to Housing Act – Incremental Supply Push – TD
• US new single-family home sales post second straight monthly decline – Reuters

On other developments:    

• Trump cancels signing of landmark bipartisan bill aimed at lowering housing costs – BBC
• Trump cancels signing of major housing bill. The president said he wouldn’t sign the bipartisan legislation until the SAVE America Act was passed. – Politico
• Trump Says He Won’t Sign Housing Bill Until Congress Passes the SAVE Act. Here’s How It Can Become Law Anyway – Time
• Trump cancels housing affordability bill signing until SAVE Act is passed – Axios
• See How Owning a Home Is Getting More Expensive in Every Way. The long list of spiraling costs includes property taxes, insurance, maintenance and home improvements – Wall Street Journal
• How to Solve the Housing Crisis? Everyone Has an Idea. High interest rates and a chronic shortage of inventory have pushed the U.S. housing market to a breaking point. In this podcast series, we examine the strategies emerging to solve the country’s housing shortfall. – Wall Street Journal
• Grading the States: Affordability & Homebuilding Report Cards—2026 Update – Realtor.com
• Senate passes housing bill to boost affordability, restrain investors. The bipartisan measure, the first major housing legislation since the financial crisis, would bar institutional investors from buying more than 350 single-family homes. – Washington Post
• Harvard Study Reveals the Real Reason the Housing Crisis Isn’t Getting Better – Realtor.com
• US consumers favor homebuying over renting for first time since 2023, BofA study shows – Reuters
• A Solution to A.I.’s Growing Power Demand: Homes. Tesla, Sunrun and Renew Home plan to tap solar panels, batteries, thermostats and other devices installed in millions of homes to meet the energy demands of artificial intelligence. – New York Times
• Buying a home has gotten harder for young adults in most U.S. metro areas – Pew Research Center
• Tornado Alley Is Shifting East. These Housing Markets Are Unprepared and Face the Biggest Risks. – Realtor.com
• The Cost of Mamdani’s Rent Freeze: Experts Warn Mayor’s High-Stakes Vote Could Trigger a NYC Housing Crisis – Realtor.com 
• Declining Immigration Undermines Urban and Rural Population Growth – Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies

On cross-country:

• Demographia International Housing Affordability, 2026 Edition – Chapman University
• Europe’s housing shortages are even worse than America’s. Why does nobody there talk about zoning? – The Works in Progress Newsletter

On China:

• China’s new home prices fall at faster pace in May on soft demand – Reuters

On other countries:  

• [Canada] Canadian housing starts fall 6% in May – Reuters
• [Canada] Canada Home Sales Rise a Second Straight Month as Buyers Return – Bloomberg
• [France] The “French model for financing purchases of primary residences” – Banque de France
• [Luxembourg] Luxembourg Housing Market: Cost Of Risk Remains In Check Amid Slow Rebound – S&P Global
• [Spain] Survey of Household Finances: is Spain not a country for the young? – CaixaBank
• [United Arab Emirates] Dubai Property Frenzy Cools But Sellers Hold the Line on Prices – Bloomberg
• [United Kingdom] ‘Time kills a deal’ more than ever in a slow housing market. In prime London, the ratio of homes under offer to fall-throughs has not been this high since the 2008 financial crisis. Imminent conveyancing reform needs to be radical – FT
• [United Kingdom] UK house prices rose by 3.8% in year to April, ONS says – Reuters

On prices, rent, and mortgage:    

• High US mortgage rates to keep housing market subdued: Reuters poll – Reuters
• The States Where Housing Prices Have Surged the Most (2021–2026) – Visual Capitalist
• How Mortgage Lock-In Is Quietly Pushing Up House Prices. A new paper co-authored by Wharton’s Lu Liu argues that homeowners stuck with low fixed mortgage rates aren’t just frozen in place — they’re propping up the housing market. – Wharton

On sales, permits, starts, and supply:     

• Residential Building Material Prices Rise at Highest Rate In Over Three Years – NAHB
• Lennar Cuts Full-Year Target, Citing ‘Stubborn’ Housing-Market Headwinds. The homebuilder says it now expects full-year deliveries of around 82,000 to 83,000 homes, citing high interest rates and geopolitical uncertainty. – Wall Street Journal
• Single-Family Permits Continue to Decline Through April as Multifamily Activity Strengthens – NAHB
• Builder Sentiment Remains Weak Amid Affordability Concerns – NAHB
• Part 2: Current State of the Housing Market; Overview for mid-June 2026 – Calculated Risk
• Grading the States: Affordability & Homebuilding Report Cards—2026 Update – Realtor.com
• Housing Starts Decreased Sharply to 1.177 million Annual Rate in May. Lowest total starts annual rate since May 2020 (at the start of pandemic). 2026 – Calculated Risk
• U.S. Housing Starts Fell Sharply in May. Housing starts, a gauge of new residential construction, fell 15.4% in May to 1.177 million – Wall Street Journal
• High Costs and Slumping Demand Squeeze Housing as Affordable Units Remain in Short Supply – Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies
• The Great American Housing Shortage Is Finally Forcing a Search for Solutions. ‘Granny flats’ in California and single-staircase codes in Texas: States are trying to fill a gap that has pushed homeownership out of reach for many – Wall Street Journal

On other developments:    

• Ten Takeaways from the 2026 State of the Nation’s Housing – Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies
• The Landscape of Apartment Property Management – Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies
• The “Home ATM” Mostly Closed in Q1. Total Mortgage Equity Withdrawal (MEW) was Negative in Q1 – Calculated Risk
• As Cities Turn to AI To Lower Housing Costs, Data Center Backlash Grows – Realtor.com
• US real estate outlook – Edition June 2026. Stability returns as sectors diverge – UBS 
• Mamdani Is about to Make Housing Even More Expensive – Heritage Foundation
• Grading the States: Affordability & Homebuilding Report Cards — 2026 Update – Realtor.com
• Why is America’s capital of cheap retail becoming so expensive? Rapid growth puts housing affordability under strain in Walmart’s Arkansas heartland – FT
• Senate eyes vote on updated housing affordability legislation. The bill has gone back and forth between the House and the Senate for months. – Politico
• Congress Reaches Deal on Housing Bill – Wall Street Journal
• Bipartisan housing bill limiting investor home purchases is headed to Trump’s desk. The Senate voted 87-8 to advance the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which caps large investor single-family purchases at 350 homes – Quartz  

From a paper by Andre Harrison & Jeremy Viele:

“We use a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model to study the effects of oil market shocks on US labor productivity and employment hours, where identification occurs through a combination of short- and long-run exclusion restrictions. The results show that labor productivity is responsive to all sides of the oil market, with employment hours responding only to demand-side forces. Further, oil market shocks explain roughly 25% of the long-run variation in both variables. Among oil market shocks, oil-specific demand shocks contribute to most of the historical fluctuations in labor productivity, while aggregate demand shocks matter most for fluctuations in employment hours.”

From a paper by Samantha Coccia & Alberto Russo:

“This paper reviews the transmission channels of both conventional and unconventional monetary policy, including income composition, earnings heterogeneity, interest rate exposure, savings redistribution, inflation tax, portfolio composition, and household debt, with a focus on their impact on income and wealth inequality. The survey highlights the crucial role of household heterogeneity in shaping the transmission of monetary policy and its differential effects on income and wealth distribution. These effects operate through several factors, including the primary source of income, employment status, net debtor or net saver positions, differences in portfolio composition, and debt levels. The paper also discusses the shadow banking sector to illustrate the relationship between monetary policy and inequality in a complex financial system. Overall, the paper provides policymakers with a guide to the multifaceted nature of the monetary policy–inequality nexus, given the pervasiveness of household heterogeneity. It also suggests avenues for further research on the combined effects of different transmission channels using macroeconomic models suited to this purpose, such as agent-based models (ABM) with heterogeneous interacting agents.”