The Unassuming Economist

On prices, rent, and mortgage:    

• How a Rent Freeze Helped Destroy Public Housing – AEI
• Mamdani Names Housing Leader and Pledges ‘Rental Rip-off’ Hearings. Mayor Zohran Mamdani named a housing commissioner and announced that the city would hold public hearings where frustrated renters could voice their complaints. – New York Times
• The Contradictions of Supply-Side Socialism. Zohran Mamdani signs executive orders to speed up new construction. His housing policy picks also want to abolish private property. – Reason
• The Rent-Control Slums of New York. Mayor Mamdani tries to stop a bankruptcy his new housing czar caused. – Wall Street Journal
• Democratic Sanity on Rent Control. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey opposes a destructive state referendum. – Wall Street Journal
• Asking Rents Decline Year-over-year – Calculated Risk
• Mortgage Rates End 2025 at the Lowest Level of the Year – NAHB
• Higher interest rates transform housing market, Texas real estate workforce – Dallas Fed

On sales, permits, starts, and supply:    

• Donald Trump moves to ban institutional investors from buying single-family homes. Change would hit buyout groups such as Blackstone and Cerberus that have amassed large residential portfolios – FT
• White House moves to ban institutional investors from buying single-family homes. Change would hit buyout groups such as Blackstone and Cerberus that have amassed large residential portfolios – FT
• President Donald Trump Is ‘Taking Steps’ To Ban Investors From Buying Single-Family Homes – Realtor.com
• Trump says he’ll ban large investors from buying homes, with few details. Politicians in both parties are trying to respond to voter anger over the price of housing. – Washington Post
• Trump’s Pledge to Evict Big Investors from Housing Market Hits Rental Stocks – Wall Street Journal
• Trump says he will ban big investors from buying single-family homes. Median sale price was at $410,800 last year, according to the Census Bureau, even as Trump campaigned on affordability – The Guardian
• Trump Targets Institutional Investors in Affordable Housing Push – Bloomberg
• Barring Institutional Investors From Buying Homes Won’t Make Housing More Affordable – and Would Likely Make Things Worse. There is no evidence that institutional investors increase prices. Barring them from the market could actually exacerbate the housing crisis. – Reason  
• Trump pushes to limit Wall Street’s footprint in housing. Housing affordability is set to be a central battleground in this year’s midterm elections. – Politico
• Housing Supply & Demand Explained in 1 Graph. And why house prices are so erratic – Real Estate Decoded
• Homebuilding and Remodeling Depend on Immigrant Labor in Major Metros – Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies
• Why America stopped building the ‘starter home’. Concepts about starter homes seem inconsistent with today’s prices and expansive floor plans, leaving many first-time homebuyers with few options. – Washington Post
• President Trump’s New Housing Policy Should Include Massive Privatization of Federal Land. The U.S. government currently owns 28% of the land in the United States, which is way too much. – Reason
• The Contradictions of Supply-Side Socialism. Zohran Mamdani signs executive orders to speed up new construction. His housing policy picks also want to abolish private property. – Reason
• Washington D.C.’s Stockpile of Old Offices Makes It a Mecca for Housing Conversions. Nation’s capital converts more offices to apartments than almost anywhere else – Wall Street Journal
• Construction Job Openings Increased in November – NAHB
• 1st Look at Local Housing Markets in December – Calculated Risk 
• Section 8 cuts would send shockwaves through the housing market – The Hill

On other developments:    

• Two Simple Ways to Fix Housing in America – Bloomberg
• This Is Not the Way to Make Housing More Affordable – Bloomberg
• Americans Are Looking to the Midwest to Find Affordability. The region offers housing costs below the national median and steady wage growth – Wall Street Journal
• US Housing Outlook – Apollo
• Richmond ranked a top housing market for 2026 – Axios
• Yes, Politicians Should Run on Affordability – New York Times
• The Condo Market Hasn’t Been This Bad in Over a Decade. Condo prices this fall posted their biggest declines since 2012, hit by rising homeowner-association dues and weaker demand – Wall Street Journal
• Trump Rolls Back Tariffs on Furniture and Kitchen Cabinets. The president has watered down import levies on a host of products in recent months to address concerns about the cost of living – Wall Street Journal
• Zillow’s CEO Is Ready for Another Slow Year in the US Housing Market. The $16 billion company is pushing more into the transaction side of the real estate industry, which Jeremy Wacksman calls ‘a better business to be in.’ – Bloomberg
• Housing Share of GDP: Third Quarter 2025 – NAHB
• The Housing Bubble and Mortgage Debt as a Percent of GDP – Calculated Risk
• Dems launch election-year affordable housing blitz – Axios
• Why housing reforms struggle to deliver on their central promise. Attempts to lower home prices will falter without follow-through. – Washington Post
• Tariffs, Manufacturing, Housing: Questions for 2026 – Cato
• The Best Markets for First-Time Homebuyers in 2026 Revealed – Realtor.com 
• Home Affordability Remains Strained Nationwide, with Modest Fourth Quarter Improvement – ATTOM

From a paper by Paramita Mukherjee and Dipankor Coondoo:

“Recently several changes have been adopted in the conduct of monetary policy in India, like tracking CPI (Consumer Price Index), targeting inflation and so on. However, certain curious features of inflation may have some implications on the effectiveness of such measures. This article tries to explore the nature of inflation during the last decade. There are certain views about the nature of Indian inflation from the structuralist perspective. This article contributes to the literature by empirically testing those propositions and coming out with some significant policy implications. The article is based on monthly data from January 2006 to March 2016. By employing econometric techniques like cointegration and vector autoregression (VAR), the article tries to explain the movements of different components of WPI (Wholesale Price Index) and CPI inflation, both core and headline inflation and how they are related to macroeconomic policy variables. The empirical analyses focus on finding out the existence of co-movements among the inflation and macroeconomic variables, explaining the role of components like food and fuel price in driving CPI and WPI. The results have some important policy implications. First, the movements of WPI and CPI and their headline and core counterparts are not explained by same set of variables. Second, food inflation is not explained by agricultural output pointing to the insufficient increase in supply in agriculture. Third, the determinants of CPI headline and core inflation are not same. So, both of them should be tracked while formulating policies. The relationship among the components of inflation point to the possibility of some adjustment in demand from one set of goods to another, implying adjustments in terms of relative prices which needs further exploration.”

From a paper by Pulapre Balakrishnan, and M Parameswaran:

“India has seen lower inflation by historical standards for the past 6 years. This has been attributed to the adoption of inflation targeting by the central bank, the Reserve Bank of India in 2016. In particular, it has been asserted that the lower inflation reflects the anchoring of expectations. We evaluate these claims. An econometric investigation indicates that there is no basis to the claim that inflation has been lowered due to the anchoring of expectations. On the other hand, we are able to account for the trajectory of inflation in India after 2016 in terms of an alternative explanation of inflation, namely the structuralist.”

From a paper by Abdullah Gülcü, Erdal Özmen and Fatma Tasdemir:

“This study aims to explore the nonlinear impact of financial integration on income inequality in advanced (AE) and emerging market and developing economies (EMDE). Our panel fixed effect threshold estimation results suggest that international financial integration (IFI) provides a data-driven estimated threshold for the effect of IFI on income inequality. IFI is positively associated with inequality in EMDE, albeit this positive relation diminishes in more financially integrated episodes. In AE, inequality decreases with IFI in less financially integrated episodes. Our empirical findings reveal that the relationship between IFI and inequality is driven by both capital inflows and outflows in AE while it is determined by capital inflows in EMDE. Finally, we investigate whether the impact of IFI on inequality changes with the level of financial development. Our results also suggest that the inequality-increasing effect of IFI is much lower in financially more developed episodes in EMDE. All these findings imply that policies fostering financial development and equitable financial access are crucially important to mitigate the adverse effects of IFI on inequality, especially in EMDE.”

From a paper by Gokcen Ogruk Maz, Sinan Yildirim, Mjellma Carabregu-Vokshi, and But Dedaj:

“This study examines the effect of inflation targeting adoption on stock market capitalization in 39 developing countries from 1995 to 2023. Baseline propensity score matching with two-way fixed effects shows positive but sometimes insignificant effects. Robustness checks excluding the 2008–2009 Global Financial Crisis, hyperinflation episodes, and both combined often yield larger and more significant estimates. To address concerns about staggered policy adoption, we use the Staggered Difference-in-Differences estimator, finding that significance emerges five to ten years after adoption. Results suggest IT supports financial development by enhancing investor confidence and macroeconomic stability, especially in lower-volatility environments.”