US Housing View – February 6, 2026

On prices, rent, and mortgage:    

  • Trump’s Pick for Fed Chair Kevin Warsh Has an Unusual Plan To Lower Mortgage Rates – Realtor.com
  • Mortgages won’t fix what ails housing. Economists keep repeating a message that nobody seems to want to hear: Financing gimmicks can’t solve a problem that’s fundamentally about math – Quartz
  • Homeowners Are Falling Behind on Their Mortgages – Realtor.com
  • Mortgage Applications Today: Demand Drops Again as Experts Blame Decline on Historic Winter Storms – Realtor.com
  • Home Prices Five Years After Covid. Synchronicity and idiosyncrasy – Home Economics
  • Trump: ‘I Want To Drive Housing Prices Up’. The president says he would rather increase prices for homeowners than drive prices down. – Reason
  • Asking Rents Decline Year-over-year – Calculated Risk  


On sales, permits, starts, and supply:    

  • Why Trump’s crackdown on big investors in housing may backfire. Curbing institutional ownership of single-family homes does not tackle the affordability crisis and could make things worse – FT
  • The Housing Market Is Slumping—but Sales Over $10 Million Are Skyrocketing. The broader real-estate market has struggled under the weight of higher mortgage rates. Meanwhile, the high end is surging. – Wall Street Journal
  • The Housing Market Is Swinging Toward Buyers. Nearly two-thirds of home buyers last year purchased at a discount to the original listing price, the highest proportion since 2019 – Wall Street Journal
  • U.S. Population Growth Slows in 2025 – NAHB
  • Will expanding the capital gains exclusion unlock housing supply? Evidence on who benefits – Brookings 
  • Final Look at Housing Markets in December and a Look Ahead to January Sales. Altos: Active single-family inventory was down 0.2% week-over-week – Calculated Risk
  • Atlanta City Limits. What’s preventing the metro from growing? – Home Economics
  • Homeowners Are Holding on to Their Homes Longer Than Ever—Especially in Coastal States – Realtor.com  
  • Home Builders Turn to White House for Help on Inventory Glut. Companies devising a plan for a federally backed ‘rent-to-own’ program to help reduce the biggest surplus of homes in many years – Wall Street Journal
  • Fannie Mae Expands U.S. Rental Housing Supply Through Nearly $74 Billion in Multifamily Loan Production Volume in 2025 – Fannie Mae
  • Why Trump’s crackdown on big investors in housing may backfire. Curbing institutional ownership of single-family homes does not tackle the affordability crisis and could make things worse – FT
  • Are YIMBYs winning the housing wars? Not so fast, these people say. Supply skeptics contend housing affordability calls for government policies, not just market forces. – Washington Post


On other developments:    

  • What Tearing Down Housing Projects Did for Kids. Bringing rich and poor together has major benefits. – The Atlantic
  • Knocking down social housing helped poor children prosper. New research shows the impact of mixed-income developments – The Economist
  • New research examines long-term effects of federal housing program from the ’90s – NPR   
  • Housing (Un)affordability: New Reports Shed New Light on the Problem. I’m especially convinced that with better policy, we could improve our uniquely dismal construction productivity. – Jared Bernstein
  • Trump’s Plan to Make Housing Affordable Is Faltering – Bloomberg
  • Trump can still do more to address affordability. Tax cuts and deregulation will fuel growth and help lower home prices. – Washington Post
  • Voters Say Housing Prices Are Too High. Trump Wants Them Higher. When President Trump said he wanted to drive housing prices up, not down, he was speaking to a conundrum that has flummoxed policymakers for decades. – New York Times
  • Congress Targets Housing Crisis as Solutions Elude Trump. Bipartisan Senate and House packages, aimed at rewarding new construction and eliminating red tape, could bring significant changes to federal housing laws. – New York Times
  • House Republicans eye next week for housing bill vote. The Housing for the 21st Century Act is part of a push by Congress to pass legislation that could address a growing housing affordability crisis. – Politico
  • The contradictions of the housing affordability dilemma – Axios
  • Why nobody really knows the scale of the U.S. housing crisis. Experts say the U.S. needs an additional 2 million to 20 million homes to fix the shortfall, underscoring the challenge of meeting the nation’s housing needs. – Washington Post
  • Do More Deportations Mean Lower Housing Costs? The Trump administration says its crackdown on immigration is reducing housing prices. Economists say other factors such as oversupply matter more. – Wall Street Journal
  • Bridging Rent and Ownership: Can the “Trump Homes” Proposal Fix America’s Housing Shortage? – The People’s Economist with Anthony Chan
  • Affordable Housing Starts in the Labor Market – Bloomberg
  • The hidden double standards driving our housing crisis. Apartments are safer and more affordable than single-family homes. Why do we treat them like a hazard? – Vox
  • Housing Unaffordability Soared to New Highs in 2024 – Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies
  • Fannie and Freddie: Single Family Delinquency Rate Increased in December. Fannie Mae Multi-Family Delinquency Rate Near Housing Bust High – Calculated Risk
  • Democrats knock Trump’s pledge to ‘drive housing prices up’ – The Hill
  •  AI is Powering a Silicon Valley Housing Rebound. The areas gaining fastest are the ones where tech workers live – Home Economics
  • U.S. Homeowner Equity Eases Slightly in Q4 2025 While Seriously Underwater Rates Stay Near Historic Lows – ATTOM
  • Home Price Growth in Opportunity Zones Slightly Behind Rest of Nation in Second Quarter – ATTOM
  • Homeownership Rate Inches Up to 65.7% – NAHB
  • Black Gen Zers and Millennials Are Half As Likely to Own Their Home As White Counterparts – Redfin  
  • The Millennial Homeownership Problem Is Mostly a Marriage Problem. Married Millennials who head their own households own at nearly the same rate as Boomers. There are just far fewer of them. – Home Economics

Posted by at 5:00 AM

Labels: Global Housing Watch

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