Housing View – May 24, 2024

Working papers and conferences:

  • Mortgage switching through the turning of the interest rate cycle – Central Bank of Ireland
  • Time-Varying Persistence of House Price Growth: The Role of Expectations and Credit Supply – SSRN


On the US—developments on house prices, rent, permits and mortgage:    

  • U.S. Economic, Housing and Mortgage Market Outlook – May 2024 – Freddie Mac
  • Could Housing Inflation Become a Problem Again? – Apollo
  • MBA: Mortgage Delinquencies Increased Slightly in Q1 2024 – Calculated Risk
  • New Construction Activity Picked Up 5.7% in April – Realtor.com
  • Housing Market Update: Mortgages Rates Dip Below 7% For First Time in 5 Weeks, Giving Buyers Some Much-Needed Relief – Redfin
  • US Housing Starts, Permits Fall Short as Mortgage Rates Rise. New home construction increased in April after down revisions. Proxy for future building fell to lowest since the end of 2022 – Bloomberg
  • Renting Forever and Trying to Create a Strong Financial Future. Either by choice or because they are priced out of the market, many people plan to never stop renting. Building wealth without home equity requires a different mind-set. – New York Times
  • 4th Look at Local Housing Markets in April; California Home Sales Up 4.4% YoY in April – Calculated Risk
  • NYC Rents Are So High That Only 5% Are Affordable for the Average Salary. Essential workers hit hardest by New York City’s housing affordability crisis – Bloomberg
  • Multifamily Housing Supply and Rents: Feast Today, Famine Tomorrow? – Richmond Fed
  • Existing Home Sales Recede in April – NAHB
  • Home Sales Fell Again in April After High Mortgage Rates Damped Activity. Sales of previously owned homes decreased 1.9% from the prior month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.14 million – Wall Street Journal
  • Opportunity Zone Home Prices Mixed but Still Keeping Up with Nationwide Price Trends – ATTOM
  • NAHB/Wells Fargo Debut New Cost of Housing Index – NAHB  


On the US—other developments:    

  • TLDR: The Future of Homeownership. Talking you through my analysis – Home Economics
  • Secret #2 – The Real Reason House Prices Skyrocketed After Covid. What the Real Estate Industry Won’t Tell You – Real Estate Decoded
  • Secret #3 – For Black Home Ownership, “Affordable” Housing Policies Have Been Worse Than Jim Crow – Real Estate Decoded
  • Secret #4 – The U.S. Home Ownership Rate Increased the Fastest When Mortgages Were 20 Years Long and Down Payments Were 20% – Real Estate Decoded
  • Secret #5 – The Home Ownership Boom After World War 2 was Due, in Part, to New Houses Becoming a Lot Smaller – Real Estate Decoded
  • Keeping What Works: How the GSEs are Protecting Homeowners, Taxpayers, and the Industry – Fannie Mae
  • New Single-Family Home Size Decline Continues – NAHB
  • Down Payment Share Reaches Q1 High, but Down Payments Fall From Historical Peak – Realtor.com
  • Want affordable housing? Take the chassis off manufactured houses. And don’t call them mobile homes. – Washington Post
  • Displaced by climate disasters, ageing Americans struggle to find housing. Older adults face a shortage of affordable and accessible homes as climate change worsens – The Guardian


On China:

  • The property firm that could break China’s back. If Vanke collapses, so might confidence in the state’s management of the economy – The Economist
  • China goes on a $1 trln apartment-buying spree – Reuters
  • China Is Finally Getting Serious About a Housing Rescue. Beijing announces plan to clear backlog of unsold homes, but questions remain over scale and financing – Wall Street Journal
  • China Attempts to End Property Crisis With Broad Rescue Package. Beijing removes floor on mortgages rates, lowers down-payment. China unleashes $42 billion cheap funding to buy unsold homes – Bloomberg
  • China unveils package to boost property sector. Central bank eases lending requirements and lowers down-payments to ease years-long slowdown – FT  
  • China Home Prices Fall at Faster Pace Despite Revival Efforts. Month-on-month declines in April were steepest in a decade. Government is seeking to address excess housing inventories – Bloomberg
  • China Says It Will Start Buying Apartments as Housing Slump Worsens. Signaling growing alarm, policymakers ramped up efforts to stem a continued decline in real estate values. – New York Times
  • China’s Housing Crash Could Set Back Millions of Promising Careers – Yahoo Finance 
  • Too Big or Not Enough? China Housing Bailout Treads a Fine Line. Beijing will try to provide enough support to absorb unsold apartments while not sparking a new bubble – Wall Street Journal
  • China’s rush to prop up housing sector aims to boost confidence ahead of third plenum: analysts. Coordinated steps from Beijing include billions of yuan in central bank funding, eased mortgage rules, and government purchase of unsold inventory. Measures show desire ‘to put a floor under the property slump’ before third plenum, but focus certain to be on industrial policy, observer says – South China Morning Post 
  • China’s Housing Rescue Too Small to End Crisis, Analysts Say. Funding amounts to a fraction of cost of outstanding inventory. Involving banks, local governments raises implementation doubt – Bloomberg
  • Will China’s fleet of policies to buoy housing sales stem slack tides in the property market? China has approved local governments and state enterprises to buy land and housing, part of an effort to get the property sector moving. Change in approach welcomed by analysts, but most said more ambitious moves will be necessary to turn the sector’s fortunes around – South China Morning Post 
  • A Tale of China’s Two Housing Markets. A few cities’ real estate sectors will bottom out this year, while others will struggle with empty flats for decades to come. – Bloomberg
  • Slump in China’s home prices, sales set to worsen this year – Reuters poll – Reuters 
  • China has finally unveiled its property rescue plan. Will it be enough? Beijing unlocks funding to buy up unsold housing but much more is needed to right stricken sector, analysts say – FT


On other countries:  

  • [Australia] Britain’s forgotten financial crisis. Britain had its fastest ever house price growth not in the 2020s but in the 1970s. Houses then were also getting smaller and worse. The problem was a lack of supply. – Work in Progress
  • [Canada] To Fight the Housing Crisis, Upzone and Build Public Housing. British Columbia’s housing crisis is among the worst in North America. Just as in other regions grappling with similar challenges, increasing density through upzoning for public and nonprofit housing is essential to tackle the crisis head-on. – Jacobin
  • [Germany] German home prices to fall 2% in 2024, supply to lag demand: Reuters poll – Reuters
  • [United Kingdom] The link between mortgage debt servicing burdens and arrears: is there a critical threshold? – Bank Underground

Posted by at 5:00 AM

Labels: Global Housing Watch

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