The Unassuming Economist

Working papers and conferences:

• Housing Subsidies for Refugees: Experimental Evidence on Life Outcomes and Social Integration in Jordan – NBER
• Housing and Inequality – CEPR
• When land is not enough: Drawing in private investment to increase social rental housing in Spain – Cities
• Measuring Fairness in the U.S. Mortgage Market – Philadelphia Fed
• Constructing Applicants from Loan-Level Data: A Case Study of Mortgage Applications – Philadelphia Fed
• Are First‑Time Home Buyers Facing Desperate Times? – SSRN

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

• Subprime Mortgages Destroyed Them. Who Paid the Price? In “The Killing Fields of East New York,” Stacy Horn profiles one 1990s white-collar crime spree and the wreckage it left behind. – New York Times
• What does Taiwan have to do with US mortgage rates? The weird financial dance between Taiwanese life insurers and US homebuyers – FT
• Asking Rents Mostly Unchanged Year-over-year – Calculated Risk
• Mortgage Applications Increase Marginally in January – NAHB
• CoreLogic: Home Price Growth Ticks Up Slightly in December – CoreLogic
• US Home Price Insights –  February 2025 – CoreLogic

On the US—other developments:    

• Trump Tariffs Risk $29,000 Rise in US Home Building Costs. Canada is the US’s biggest foreign supplier of lumber. Tariffs likely to make it harder for Americans to afford homes – Bloomberg
• Climate Change to Wipe Away $1.5 Trillion in U.S. Home Values, Study Says. Rising home-insurance costs and more homeowners spurning some risky neighborhoods will drive these declines, according to First Street – Wall Street Journal
• That Giant Sucking Sound? It’s Climate Change Devouring Your Home’s Value. – New York Times
• Unaffordability in the West Accelerates Mortgage Buydowns – CoreLogic
• To Rebuild Los Angeles, Fix Zoning. A lot more housing is needed, and not primarily in the areas destroyed by the fires. – The Atlantic
• Are First‑Time Home Buyers Facing Desperate Times? – New York Fed
• Where the housing market shift is happening the fastest right now. Inventory is a key housing metric. Here’s what it’s telling us right now, according to ResiClub’s latest monthly report. – Fast Company
• Fannie and Freddie: Single Family Serious Delinquency Rates Increased in December. Multi-Family Delinquency Rate Declined Slightly in December – Calculated Risk
• Construction Labor Market Softens – NAHB  
• Homeownership Rate for Younger Households Declines – NAHB
• Minnesota’s Multifamily Housing Industry Faces Rising Property Insurance Costs – Minneapolis Fed
• US Housing Market Is Doing Something ‘Very Unusual’ – Newsweek
• Nearly 70% of Single People Struggle to Afford Housing Payments, Compared to 52% of Married People – Redfin
• Will Congress Regulate AI’s Rapid Growth in Real Estate? – CoreLogic   

On Australia and New Zealand:

• [Australia] Australian House Prices Fall Further Led by Sydney and Melbourne. Outlook expected to improve somewhat if rates are reduced. But affordability, slower immigration will keep a lid on gains – Bloomberg
• [New Zealand] Average Wellington house prices plummet nearly 25 percent in latest official valuations – RNZ
• [New Zealand] Economist warns Kiwis not to ‘bet the house’ on housing market – RNZ
• [New Zealand] New Zealand house prices crash – MacroBusiness

On other countries:  

• [Canada] Vancouver: Listings surge as sellers anticipate a housing market revival – National Bank of Canada
• [Canada] Measuring unmet housing need and housing instability in households with roommates and extended family – Statistics Canada
• [Canada] Building new homes in the path of floods and wildfires could cost billions, threaten affordability: report. First-of-its-kind analysis shows significant financial risks from climate change-fuelled disasters unless a small proportion of the new homes needed by 2030 are built out of harm’s way. – Canadian Climate Institute
• [Russia] Moscow Property Rivals London as Rich Russians Bring Cash Home. High-end real estate in the city is seeing a surge in demand as Russians invest back home and turn away from overseas deals because of sanctions. – Bloomberg
• [Spain] La vivienda ya es más cara que nunca: el precio medio superó en 2024 a los años de la burbuja. El importe promedio, con 2.086 euros por metro cuadrado, fue superior al de 2006 y 2007, según la estadística registral, que certifica un nuevo auge del mercado – El Pais
• [Spain] España gasta cuatro veces menos que Europa en vivienda social. El país invirtió de media 34 euros por habitante en asistencia habitacional entre 2007 y 2021, lejos de los 160 euros de la media europea – El Pais
• [Spain] Nuevas previsiones para el sector inmobiliario español: el ciclo alcista se afianza en 2025 – CaixaBank
• [United Kingdom] Peace, permanence and affordable prices: six ways to solve Britain’s housing crisis – The Guardian

From a paper by Nestor Garza, Ivo Gasic, Clemente Larrain:

“This paper aims to build a set of long-term, geographically controlled land value indices for Santiago de Chile, with which to test land rent theory predictions regarding macroeconomic impacts. This paper uses a geographic cluster approach to the Laspeyres estimator, weighted by the stock of available land plots and their market offers per zone, to create two quarterly land value indices for Gran Santiago during the period 1983Q4–2016Q2. Subsequently, this paper implements dynamic time series methods (Vector Error Correction) as a baseline to determine the effect of economic performance and interest rate on urban land values. The two land value indices are correctly predicted by economic and interest rate shocks, as theoretically expected. In addition, this paper found that land values grew faster-than-predicted during the period of the so-called “Chilean Miracle” (1992–1998), a situation associated in the literature with worsened housing affordability and socio-spatial inequality.” 

From a paper by Alessandra Fogli, Veronica Guerrieri, Mark Ponder, and Marta Prato:

“Since the 1980s, the US has experienced not only a steady increase in income inequality, but also a contemporaneous rise in residential segregation by income. What is the relationship between inequality and residential segregation? How does it affect intergenerational mobility? We first document a positive correlation between inequality and segregation, both over time and across metro areas. We then develop a general equilibrium model where parents choose the neighborhood where they raise their children and invest in their children’s education. In the model, segregation and inequality amplify each other because of a local spillover that affects the return to education. We calibrate the model to a representative US metro in 1980 and use the micro estimates of neighborhood exposure effects in Chetty and Hendren (2018b) to discipline the strength of the local spillover. We first use the calibrated version of the model to explore the economy’s response to an unexpected skill premium shock. We find that segregation dynamics played a significant role in amplifying the increase in inequality and in dampening intergenerational mobility. We then use the model to explore the effects of policies designed to move poor families to better neighborhoods, like the Moving To Opportunity (MTO) program. We show that scaling up MTO policies induces general equilibrium effects that limit their efficacy.”

From a paper by Nafeesa Yunus:

“This study examines the impact of aggregate oil shocks and disentangled oil shocks on U.S. and seven major securitized real estate markets. Oil is integrated with the markets and leads them over the long-run. The short-run impact of oil shocks on the markets is negative. A disentangled analysis of oil shocks reveals that supply and demand shocks have differential impacts. Over the long-run, supply shocks have little impact, while demand shocks contribute significantly to common trends and lead each market. In the short-run, demand shocks have positive effects on each market, whereas supply shocks have negative but lesser effects.”

From C40 Cities:

“New research from C40 Cities today reveals that making the construction sector more sustainable in cities will generate multiple socio-economic benefits, including the creation of millions of green jobs.

Building greener cities: green job opportunities in clean construction, is the first major piece of work to identify the potential for cities’ workforces of adopting clean construction, presenting a compelling economic case for shifting to clean construction practices. The research, supported by Laudes Foundation and the City of Oslo, and with insights from Building and Woodworkers International, spans seven major cities: Bogotá, London, Madrid, Mexico City, Nairobi, Oslo and Seattle, to give a global perspective on how decarbonising the built environment, responsible currently for close to 40% of global CO2 emissions, can support a stable and healthy workforce and provide opportunities for greater social equity.

Researchers modelled the impact of two scenarios from 2023-2050: first, a city’s continuation of current carbon-intensive construction scenario, and second, a shift towards clean construction (defined as decarbonised, resource-efficient, resilient and socially just built environment and construction systems). The research projects the changes in job numbers and job roles, maps workforce diversity and quality of work, and calculates the investment needed for each.”

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