The Unassuming Economist

On prices, rent, and mortgage:    

• Improving Affordability, Emerging Spring Demand May Boost House Price Growth Nationally, According to First American Data & Analytics Monthly Home Price Index Report – Fidelity
• Shrinking Rent Savings in DC Ease Path to Homeownership for Aspiring Buyers – Realtor.com

On sales, permits, starts, and supply:    

• Count of Second Homes Declines in 2024 – NAHB
• Event: State Policy Playbook: Expanding and Preserving Attainable Housing with Manufactured Homes on May 27 – Lincoln Institute
• Why Approved Housing Doesn’t Always Turn Into Finished Homes – Realtor.com
• Does Upzoning Work? This New Study Says Yes—Under the Right Conditions – Realtor.com
• Seasonality in American Housing. ‘Spring selling season’ is real—but only where there is a spring – Home Economics
• Late April Is the Best Time to List a Home For Sale. At that time they sell faster—and at a higher price – Home Economics
• Pending Home Sales Increased in March Despite Rising Mortgage Rates and Gas Prices – Realtor.com
• The Disappearance of the Moderately Priced Single-Family Home – Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies
• In a Slow Market, Some Houses Are Still Selling Fast. Buyers are picky while prices and mortgage rates remain high, but homes in move-in condition can go quickly – Wall Street Journal
• NMHC on Apartments: Market Tightness “mostly unchanged” in April Survey
• Multifamily executives have lowered their expectations for total 2026 multifamily starts – Calculated Risk

On other developments:    

• Handbook on Affordability – Cato Institute
• With less immigration, urban growth slowed in 2025 – Peterson Institute
• The race- and place-based factors influencing homeowners insurance in the climate change era – Brookings
• The Challenges and Opportunities Facing Detroit’s Housing Market: A Look at the Data and Local Responses – Chicago Fed
• 3rd Look at Local Housing Markets in March – Calculated Risk  
• Spring Seller Survey: Optimism Meets Reality in the 2026 Housing Market – Realtor.com
• Trump wants $1.5tn for the Pentagon – and cuts to healthcare and housing – The Guardian
• Home Sales Profits Fell Below 45 Percent for the First Time in Five Years – ATTOM
• Why First-Time Buyer Age Isn’t Rising—Even as Housing Gets Less Affordable – AEI
• Housing policy keeps running into the same problems. Federal gridlock and local bottlenecks continue to slow down construction. Meanwhile, people are scrambling for housing. – Slow Boring  

On cross-country:

• Regional differences: where home buyers must save over 20 years for upfront costs – KIEL Institute
• YIMBY goes global? Unlocking Africa’s housing markets. Africa needs to house nearly a billion new urban residents by 2050. Who’s going to build it – and how will it be paid for? – Ideas in Development

Working papers and conferences:

• How does traffic, or the fear of it, affect housing affordability? – UCLA
• Labor Supply Effects of Monetary Policy: Evidence from Australian Mortgage Holders – IMF
• A Tale of Two Countries – The Real Estate Crises in 1990s Japan and Contemporary China – NBER 
• Visual Cues and Valuation: Evidence from the Housing Market – SSRN
• From Plot to Block: Participatory Land Use for Climate-Resilient Detached Housing in Finland – Sustainable Development
• Drilling Down: The Impact of Oil Price Shocks on Housing Prices – The Energy Journal
• Housing Affordability via Macroprudential Policy – Indiana University

On China:

• How long will China’s real estate crisis last? – Brookings

On Australia and New Zealand:

• [Australia] Canada slashed migration and housing costs dropped. There may be lessons for Australia. While rising vacancy rates caused a dip in rents and home prices, it hasn’t solved Canada’s chronically unaffordable property market – The Guardian
• [Australia] Economic stress scares off Australian homebuyers as auction clearances fall. Houses are being pulled from auctions as vendors get cold feet amid economic uncertainty about borrowing costs – The Guardian

On other countries:  

• [Canada] Ford government spent billions on housing initiatives yet homebuilding has declined – Fraser Institute
• [Canada] Ontario housing will remain unaffordable without real reforms – Fraser Institute
• [Spain] What does the growing dispersion of prices tell us about the housing market? – CaixaBank
• [Spain] The shortage of new homes continues to strain Spain’s housing market – CaixaBank
• [United Arab Emirates] UAE Residential Property Price Report 2026 March – REIDIN
• [United Kingdom] ‘We’re trapped’: despair for sellers as Iran war knocks confidence in UK housing market. Estate agents say rising mortgage costs have created a mood of fear, with Canterbury among the cities being hit – The Guardian
• [United Kingdom] Higher-income households benefited most from Help to Buy, thinktank finds. Analysis by IFS shows George Osborne’s mortgage schemes launched in 2013 had little effect on social mobility – The Guardian

On prices, rent, and mortgage:    

• How Austin’s stunning drop in rents explains housing in America. We finally have some good news about housing affordability. – Vox
• Higher rents keep men at home – AIBM
• Don’t overlook these two big parts of your housing payment. Not all monthly costs are tied to mortgage rates. – Washington Post
• America’s Rising Debt Could Keep Mortgage Rates High—and Housing Expensive – Realtor.com
• The Austin Experience: More Housing, Lower Rents – Timothy Taylor

On sales, permits, starts, and supply:    

• D.C. mayoral candidates want to build more housing — but investors don’t. Plans by Janeese Lewis George and Kenyan R. McDuffie to increase the housing supply and lower costs for renters are different in scope, but they face the same hurdles. – Washington Post
• Rehabilitating Housing Supply: Evidence from an Institutional Investor’s Acquisition, Renovation, and Market Position – AEI
• NAR: Existing-Home Sales Decreased to 3.98 million SAAR in March. Median House Prices Increased 1.4% Year-over-Year – Calculated Risk
• Existing Home Sales Fell in March – NAHB
• Single-Family Permits Decline Sharply to Start 2026 – NAHB
• Part 1: Current State of the Housing Market; Overview for mid-April 2026 – Calculated Risk
• Part 2: Current State of the Housing Market; Overview for mid-April 2026 – Calculated Risk
• The war in Iran hits home as housing rebound stalls. Home sales and mortgage applications have slumped as higher rates weigh on consumers. That spells trouble for the GOP’s pledges to address housing affordability. – Politico
• Higher Energy Prices Increase Residential Construction Costs – NAHB
• What the Economic Report of the President Gets Wrong and Right About Housing Supply – Cato Institute
• White House Promises ‘Trump Boom’ of New Housing by Cutting Red Tape – Realtor.com
• ‘Chilling effect’: The housing shortage could have a money problem. The housing legislation that has some long-term rental homes hanging in the balance has been held up over differing views between the House and the Senate. – Politico
• Empty Department Stores Are Housing Cleveland’s Booming Population. Historic buildings are being reimagined as modern apartments, attracting young renters, empty nesters and reverse commuters – Wall Street Journal
• Builder Sentiment Posts Notable Decline on Economic Uncertainty – NAHB
• When more housing becomes a hard sell
• The U.S. agrees it needs more homes, but fights over where and how reveal deeper conflicts about growth and change. – Slow Boring

On other developments:    

• Housing and Demographics – Calculated Risk
• Real estate stocks and housing affordability. The spring housing season is here. Where are real estate stocks? – Fidelity
• March 2026 Luxury Housing Report: Pure Luxury—Where Luxury Is the Norm – Realtor.com
• Housing Problems are Political, Not Economic – Real Estate Decoded
• The Housing Market Is More Fragmented Than Ever—Here’s a New Way To Understand the Data – Realtor.com
• America’s Furniture Stores Struggle to Survive a Frozen Housing Market. Retailers are going bankrupt and liquidating as record-low housing turnover leaves fewer customers looking to furnish homes. – New York Times
• Will Americans want more housing if it looks prettier? Maybe a little bit, but I have my doubts. – Noahpinion
• AI use in housing is booming. The rules to keep it fair are shrinking. The Trump administration is rolling back civil rights protections that have been used to challenge bias in housing. – Politico
• Trump has not done enough to tackle soaring housing costs, real estate billionaire says. Republican donor Stephen Ross argues housing affordability is ‘going to be the biggest issue’ in US – FT 
• Michigan zoning plan sparks affordability debate – Axios
• Big spending on social housing is untenable in this economy. The D.C. mayoral candidate’s dueling plans: Bold and unrealistic vs. modest and achievable. – Washington Post 
• A New Mandate: Redevelopment Authorities and Social Housing in Massachusetts – Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies
• Market Clock 2026 Q1: The Most Fragmented Housing Market in Years – Realtor.com
• Make Housing More Affordable – CEPR
• A Quick Visit to the Housing Market – CEPR
• Golden Years Postponed: How Expensive Housing Markets Are Keeping Older Homeowners Employed – Realtor.com
• How Homeownership Helps Build Wealth. Mortgage modifications during the Great Recession helped distressed borrowers keep their homes and accumulate more capital gains wealth, a new Wharton study finds. – Wharton
• The war in Iran hits home as housing rebound stalls. Home sales and mortgage applications have slumped as higher rates weigh on consumers. That spells trouble for the GOP’s pledges to address housing affordability. – Politico
• Foreclosure Activity Rises in Q1 2026 as Market Continues to Normalize – ATTOM

From a paper by Luis I. Jacome, Nicolas E. Magud, Samuel Pienknagura, and Martın Uribe:

“We explore the historical link between populist regimes, fiscal monetization, and inflation, and how these links affect monetary policy in the 21st century. Using data for a large set of advanced economies and emerging markets since 1960, we show that, historically, left-leaning populist regimes are linked to increases in central bank lending to the central government, a gauge of deficit monetization. In turn, central bank lending is associated with marked increases in inflation. We show that past exposure to populism that relied on deficit monetization affects the conduct of monetary policy today. Countries with a history of deficit monetization and left-wing populist regimes systematically respond more strongly to deviations of inflation expectations from target. This effect persists even after controlling for the direct effect of past inflation on monetary policy rules. In the context of the literature of experienced learning, this novel finding sheds light on the persistence of past populist policies—central banks operating under the shadow of past populist regimes that relied on inflation-prone deficit monetization continue today needing to send stronger signals of their independence and commitment to price stability to effectively anchor inflation expectations.”

From a paper by Giuseppe Pio Dachille, Antonio Dalla Zuanna, Monica Paiella, and Eliana Viviano:

“We quantify how the employment expansion accompanying Italy’s post-pandemic recovery mitigated the distributional consequences of the contemporaneous surge in prices, which disproportionately affected households at the bottom of the expenditure distribution. Using linked administrative employment records and household survey and expenditure data, we examine labour income dynamics, employment transitions, differential inflation exposure, and the redistributive role of the tax–benefit system for Italian households without pension or self-employment income over 2018–2023. Despite elevated inflation, households in the lowest expenditure quintile experienced gains in real labour income, whereas those higher in the distribution did not. The decline in inequality is driven primarily by employment entry among previously non-employed household members, while adjustments among continuously employed workers played a limited role. Extensive-margin gains reflect stronger demand for low-skilled labour rather than differential labour-supply responses to inflation. Microsimulations indicate that fiscal measures cushioned disposable incomes at the bottom but did not alter the central role of employment growth in shaping distributional outcomes.”