The Unassuming Economist

On cross-country:

• Could housing crack before inflation does? And a contrarian view on oil – FT

On the US:    

• The Red Hot Housing Market: the Role of Policy and Implications for Housing Affordability – Fed
• Biden administration to fight racial bias in U.S. real estate appraisals – Reuters
• Treasury Shifts $377 Million Among States as Pandemic Housing Aid Dries Up. The Biden administration pulled back the aid from states and counties with unspent funds and diverted it to four states pressing for more: California, New York, New Jersey and Illinois. – New York Times
• Warning lights start to flash on US housing – ING
• Housing finance reform: The path forward gets rolling – Brookings
• Houses and Cars Have Taken Over the Economy. People are milking both bubbles for cash while the sun shines. – Bloomberg
• Falling home prices? It’s only likely in these 13 housing markets, says CoreLogic – Fortune
• How the pandemic housing market spurred buyer’s remorse across America – NPR
• What’s Driving Home Price Growth in 2022? The housing market has been red hot, but if you’re looking to buy in 2022, there is good news: the market may cool down slightly. – Freddie Mac
• Housing Crunch Turns Employers Into Landlords. It’s a new twist on the old concept of company towns. “If you call anybody, they’re all buying houses for their staff,” says Kim Jensen, a Wisconsin restaurateur. – Bloomberg
• When It Comes to Inflation, Our Focus Should Be On the Cost of Housing. The Federal Reserve is raising interest rates — but Congress has a chance to bring real relief. – Politico
• There still aren’t enough houses – Axios 
• Can We Untie Real Estate and Employment? – The Big Picture
• San Francisco Rents Barely Changed During Covid Housing Boom. NYC also saw modest rent growth, at about 4%: Zillow data. Renters in major cities still pay well above national average – Bloomberg 
• Billionaire MacKenzie Scott gives $436m for US affordable housing. Scott, who was formerly married to Jeff Bezos, is part of group of billionaires promising to donate more than half their wealth – The Guardian
• Key facts about housing affordability in the U.S. – Pew Research Center
• The US’s top housing authority just declared housing a human right – Quartz  
• The real estate evangelist — why buy one home when you can buy 100? – FT

On China

• China Says Housing Prices Are Stable, but Developers See Significant Declines. One reason for diverging picture is the composition of the official data, economists and analysts say – Wall Street Journal

On other countries:  

• [Australia] Early Signs Point to Downturn in Sydney Property Prices After 27% Rise – Bloomberg
• [Australia] Interest rate rise threatens Australia’s booming housing market. Owners rush to cash in as prices in even sleepy towns rocket after city residents search for more space – FT
• [Germany] What Is Adler and Why Is It Fueling Fears About Real Estate? – Bloomberg
• [United Arab Emirates] Dubai Property Market Set to Consolidate 2021 Gains, S&P Says – Bloomberg
• [United Kingdom] Average house price in Great Britain exceeds £350,000 for first time. Asking prices up 1.7% in March, biggest monthly rise for this time of year in 18 years, according to Rightmove – The Guardian
• [United Kingdom] Where next for the private rented sector? – Social Market Foundation

From a speech by Fed Governor Christopher J. Waller:

On rents:

“However, more recently rents have accelerated sharply. On net, rents have risen 6.5 percent since January 2020, according to the prices tracked under the Consumer Price Index (CPI). That is not out of line with the pace of rent increases seen in the CPI over the previous five years. But there is good reason to think this number doesn’t fully reflect the extent to which rents have grown. CPI measures rents that people are currently paying, under leases that can be slow to reflect market conditions. Meanwhile, measures of market rent have increased a lot more than 6.5 percent over the last two years. For example, CoreLogic’s single family rent index rose 12 percent over the 12 months through December, and RealPage’s measure of asking rent for units in multifamily buildings rose 15 percent over the 12 months through February. Based on various measures of asking rents, some recent research suggests that the rate of rent inflation in the CPI will double in 2022. If so, rent as a component of inflation will accelerate, which has implications for monetary policy.

Rent is a significant share of monthly expenses for many households, but lower income households spend a larger fraction of their budget on housing, so rising rents hit these households harder. In 2019, those in the lowest quintile of household income dedicated 41 percent of their spending to housing, while those in the top quintile spent only 28 percent. One piece of better news for low-income renters is that rent increases have not been larger in the neighborhoods where they tend to live. Specifically, data from RealPage suggest that asking rents rose 16 percent in both low- and moderate-income neighborhoods from January 2020 to February 2022, the same as in higher income neighborhoods.”

On affordability of purchasing a home:

“House prices are up a cumulative 35 percent since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the Zillow Home Value Index. That rate of increase is much faster than the previous five years and even faster than during the housing boom of the mid-2000s. Looking over the past two years, one would think the large increase in home prices would have made it more difficult for renters to become first-time buyers. Surprisingly, we have not seen evidence of that yet. The fraction of renters aged 20 to 45 who transitioned into home ownership last year was the highest since the Great Recession. It could be that time spent at home during the pandemic made renters more interested in owning a home, or that people are getting help from family or friends with down payments, or that some people are choosing to buy smaller homes than they would have a few years ago when prices were lower. Whatever the causes, the increase in first time buyers is clear.

Home buying during the pandemic has been strong among minority families as well. In 2020, 7.3 percent of home purchase loans for owner-occupied properties were taken out by Black families, the highest level since 2007 and well above the low of 4.8 percent in 2013. Still, the gap in homeownership rates between minority and white families remains very wide. Moreover, according to Census Bureau data, homeownership rates for Black and Hispanic families appear to have edged down during 2021. These trends may reflect that the negative economic effects of the pandemic were felt disproportionately by minority households. Indeed, research shows that minority homeowners were much more likely to miss mortgage payments and enter mortgage forbearance than white homeowners. While federal and private sector forbearance programs helped many households keep their homes, families experiencing more permanent or severe income losses may have had to sell their homes and exit homeownership.”

On housing demand:

“Demand for housing space has been especially strong during the pandemic. Lockdowns as well as remote work and school may have spurred people to seek homes with more space, leading to an increase in demand for larger and otherwise better homes.⁵ In fact, the average size of new single-family homes increased in 2021, reversing a downward trend from 2015 through 2020. Retail sales at building supply stores surged during the pandemic, as homeowners added space or made other improvements that could increase the quality of their homes. In January, this spending was 42 percent higher than the average for 2019, and even after adjustment for the sharp increase in the price of building materials, it was still up 19 percent. One indication of people trading up for housing is evident by comparing Zillow’s Home Value Indexes by housing type. The index for single-family homes has increased more than that for condominiums since January 2020. In addition, purchases of second homes have increased. Second homes averaged about 3-1/2 percent of home purchase loan originations from 2014 to 2019 but about 5 percent of originations in 2021. The 2021 share was in line with the peak seen during the last housing boom.

Meanwhile, changes in household formation may have been contributing to increases in housing demand over the past year or so. While many households increased in size during the early months of the pandemic, as young people returned to their parents’ homes, this change appears to have largely reversed by the end of 2021. The fraction of adults aged 18 to 30 who are the heads of their own households is now back near its 2017-2019 average. The surge in the number of households has pushed down housing vacancy rates from already-low levels. Rental and homeowner vacancy rates fell considerably during the pandemic, reaching lows in the fourth quarter of last year that haven’t been seen since the 1980s.

The pandemic-related changes in demand for housing, rented and owned, coincided with a longer-run increase in demand to live in certain parts of the country. For the past several decades, demand for living in cities with high-paying jobs and many urban amenities has surged, pushing up housing costs in these areas. Among metro areas in the top quartile of local housing demand, population increased 80 percent, and single-family home prices rose more than 110 percent from 1990 to 2019 after adjusting for inflation.⁶ For the nation as a whole, population only increased 32 percent and house prices rose 59 percent.”

On housing supply:

“The supply side has been pushing in the same direction—towards tighter housing markets and more expensive shelter. U.S. housing supply has probably been more constrained lately than at any time since the end of World War II. One estimate is that the current growth in the supply of new housing units is about 100,000 less per year that would be needed to support trend increases in demand from household formation and replacement of depreciating units.⁷ Supply adjusts to changes in the economy more slowly than demand because of the time it takes to plan and build. With workers at home and supply bottlenecks, there were pandemic-related drops in the production and importation of many construction materials. These supply shortages contributed to skyrocketing input prices. In January 2022, lumber prices included in the Producer Price Index were 92 percent higher than the 2019 average. Even with increased materials costs, suppliers have been unable to keep up with demand. The volume of lumber now being sold is more than 150 percent higher than last August and is similarly larger than the average volume over the previous ten years.

Labor is also a key input in home construction. The supply of construction labor, like other sectors, has been held down by pandemic-specific issues like early retirement. One measure of labor market tightness for the construction industry increased steadily from 2010 to 2019 and then in 2021 was more than double the level recorded during the construction boom of the mid-2000s.

Local land use regulations have also played a role in constraining housing supply over the past several decades. Probably not by accident, these regulations have tended to be more restrictive in areas with high housing demand. There has been a growing public debate about these restrictions on local home building, not just at the local level, but among governors and state legislatures. While some local regulations have been changed to allow more housing construction in high demand areas, the effects will take time, and it remains to be seen whether the increases in supply created by these regulatory changes will be enough to satisfy local demand.”

From the IMF’s latest report on Indonesia:

From the IMF’s latest report on Israel:

“Furthermore, the reversal of several measures was needed to address emerging risks in the housing market. The rapid rise in housing prices—due to limited supply and rapid mortgage growth—rekindled concerns of price misalignment. With the house price-to-income and price-to-rent ratios at high levels, the BoI has appropriately reversed the increase in the LTV limit and the relaxation of an additional Tier 1 capital requirement for housing loans. Further tightening of macroprudential measures—e.g., lowering the debt-service-to-income cap from its current 50 percent ratio—could help stem banks’ exposures to the housing market and prevent potentially unsustainable borrowing.”

Addressing housing affordability should be high priority for the government. Given strong population growth and little growth in housing starts since 2019, investment in housing needs to accelerate significantly to curtail the existing housing shortage. In October, the government announced a plan for construction of 280,000 homes and approval of 500,000 homes in 2022–25. In December, to discourage investors in favor of first-time residence buyers, parliament increased the residential purchase tax on investors from 5 to 8 percent for the next 3 years. Further structural measures to ease housing supply—reforming property taxes, increasing land auctions, streamlining building regulations, allowing fast-track approvals of mixed-use development—should also be advanced.

(…)

Authorities’ views. The authorities agreed that banks’ strong balance sheets and macroprudential easing allowed the financial system to support the economy during the pandemic. The authorities insisted that supply-side bottlenecks in the housing market need to be addressed and were less concerned about banks’ exposures to housing market risks due to conservative LTV ratios and capital buffers. They noted that the committee reviewing the financial supervision structure was just commencing its work. Nonetheless, some committee members indicated a preference for retaining the current bank supervision architecture under the central bank given the experience of effective financial stability coordination during the pandemic.

(…)

Improving the supply of affordable housing. Promoting public housing closer to economic centers, targeted to disadvantaged groups (e.g., using the mixed neighborhood models of the UK and US) would allow low-income workers better proximity to available jobs. This would require addressing the existing severe housing supply shortages. The government’s 2022–25 plan to increase the stock of available housing, which envisages additional 1.2 percent of GDP in spending, is a step in the right direction. It includes support for new schools, sewage, and other related infrastructure. However, strengthening municipal incentives to issue permits for residential housing also requires tax and land reforms, and potentially, a municipal reform. Less costly options to provide affordable housing farther away from economic centers carry trade-offs with the cost of better transport and digital infrastructure to ensure physical and digital accessibility to the available jobs.”

From a VoxEU post by Rebecca Diamond and Enrico Moretti:

“Over the last three decades there has been increased polarisation in income among US communities, but how the standard of living varies across communities is not clear. This column uses transaction data for three million households to examine standards of living – in terms of consumption – in cities across the US by income and education, and how they relate to the local cost of living. For college-educated households, expensive cities offer incomes high enough to offset the higher cost of living and taxes. For less-educated households, expensive cities offer a standard of living that is systematically below that in affordable cities.

Over the last three decades there has been increased polarisation in income among US communities (Austin et al. 2018), while economically vibrant cities such as New York, San Francisco, Boston, and Seattle have experienced fast increases in mean household income. At the same time, less dynamic local labour markets have experienced more limited increases in income and, in some cases, even declines (Moretti 2012). What is less clear is how the actual standard of living of residents varies across communities. The standard of living of residents of a city – which is the amount of consumption households are able to purchase – depends both on the income level that residents can expect there and the local cost of living. 

While we know that large, expensive cities tend to have jobs that offer higher nominal earnings and small, affordable cities tend to have jobs that offer lower nominal earnings, we know little about where standards of living are highest. Are residents of dynamic metro areas better or worse off in terms of consumption compared to residents of smaller, economically struggling communities? This lack of information is surprising, because the amount of consumption is arguably a key component of economic wellbeing. There is limited systematic empirical evidence on the differences in consumption across cities and how they relate to local cost of living. The paucity of evidence likely reflects the lack of datasets that can measure consumption and are large enough to allow for a detailed geographical analysis. 

In a new paper, we provide the first estimates of standard of living by city for households in a given income or education group and study how they relate to local cost of living (Diamond and Moretti 2021). Our main data source is a representative sample of three million US households’ linked bank and credit card transactions in 2014. We use these to measure the value of consumption expenditures as we observe essentially all debit and credit card transactions, cheque and Automated Clearing House (ACH) payments, and cash withdrawals conducted every day. Our consumption data are comprehensive and include virtually all purchases conducted by individuals in our sample. We quantify how consumption in expensive cities compares with consumption in affordable cities for a given income or educational group. 

To measure local prices, we build consumer price indexes that vary by city and income group. Our baseline price index is an index which mimics the index used by the US government to estimate the official national consumer price index (CPI). It is a weighted average of the local prices of items consumed by the average household with income-specific weights reflecting the importance of each item in the bundle for consumers of a given income group. Our data include all items consumed by households, from housing (the most important item) to groceries, restaurants, and other parts of the typical family budget.¹    

The price indexes point to large differences in cost of living across cities, especially for low-income households. The overall cost of living faced by low-income households (post-tax income less than $50,000) in the most expensive city (San Jose, CA) is 49% higher than in the median city (Cleveland) and 99% higher than in the most affordable city (Natchez, MS). By contrast, we uncover significantly smaller geographical differences for high-income households (post-tax income greater than $$200,000). 

Using the prices indexes, we measure the standard of living that low- and high-skill households can expect in each US city and how it varies as a function of local prices. We focus on three skill groups, based on the schooling level of the household head: (i) four-year college or more, (ii) high school or some college, (iii) less than high school. 

Table 1 shows our findings for households where the head has a college degree or more for the 50 largest cities in the US. “