The Unassuming Economist

On prices, rent, and mortgage:    

• New Home vs. Existing Home Prices in Q1 2026 – NAHB
• Freddie Mac House Price Index Increased in April; Up 1.4% Year-over-year. Punta Gorda House Prices Down 21% from Recent Peak, Austin Down 17% – Calculated Risk
• Mortgage rates are hovering at their highest point since last August. The 30-year fixed rate climbed to 6.53% this week as uncertainty over the Iran war weighs on borrowers and lenders – Quartz
• US new home sales slump in April amid higher mortgage rates, prices – Reuters
• Zillow downgrades its home price forecast across 400-plus housing markets—see the data. Zillow predicts that national housing affordability may improve slightly as U.S. income growth outpaces U.S. home price growth. – Fast Company
• A.I. Boom Upends San Francisco Housing Market. The Bay Area boasts the highest median home prices in the country and experienced the sharpest annual price increases. – New York Times
• Mortgage Lenders Shift Focus to Enhancing the Consumer Experience – Fannie Mae
• Single-Family AD&C Lending Edges Higher in Q1 – NAHB
• Asking Rents Continue to Decline Year-over-year – Calculated Risk
• House Price Appreciation by State and Metro Area in the First Quarter of 2026 – NAHB

On sales, permits, starts, and supply:     

• New Home Sales Decrease to 622,000 Annual Rate in April. Median New Home Price is Down 15% from the Peak due to Change in Mix – Calculated Risk
• Housing Supply Is Not Primarily a Financing Problem – AEI
• L.A.’s Plan To Build Half a Million New Homes Is Drawing Major Developer Interest – Realtor.com
• he Barriers to Building More Housing – New York Times
• HBGI Q1 2026: Single-Family Construction Slips Across All Geographies – NAHB
• Slight Increase for Construction Job Openings – NAHB
• Highest Paid Occupations in Construction in 2025 – NAHB

On other developments:    

• New Home Sales Down in April on Affordability Concerns – NAHB  
• Real-Estate Agents Are Quitting the Slow Housing Market. In the fourth year of a struggling market, even real-estate professionals who made it this far are reaching a breaking point – Wall Street Journal
• By 2064, the Global Population Could Be Halved in a Worst-Case Scenario—but Housing Affordability Poses a Far More Immediate Risk – Realtor.com
• Lenders and Real Estate Agents Still Beat Online Sources as Top Mortgage Influencers… For Now – Fannie Mae
• Louisiana is criminalizing a housing problem. Without addressing the underlying housing shortage, the bill risks creating a cycle of repeat arrests that effectively turns jail cells into expensive temporary shelters. – Reason
• An Interview with Jim the Realtor – Calculated Risk
• Berkshire Is Convinced the American Dream of Homeownership Will Stay Alive. Under its new chief executive, Greg Abel, Berkshire raises its bet on a market recovery by adding another housing company to its portfolio – Wall Street Journal
• Over 100,000 Tech Workers Have Been Laid Off This Year Already. Where Will They Move Next? – Realtor.com
• This Housing Bill Is Progress, Not Perfection. The House-amended 21st Century Road to Housing Act will has a meaningful effect, increasing housing supply across the country. – Wall Street Journal
• The AI Premium: How AI Boom Is Reshaping Bay Area Luxury Home Buying – Realtor.com
• Housing policies in Saint Paul yield mixed results, data and developers say. New Minneapolis Fed data dashboard highlights housing challenges and opportunities in Minnesota’s capital city – Minneapolis Fed
• Saint Paul Housing Dashboard. Minneapolis Fed launches new tool to inform housing policy in Saint Paul, Minnesota – Minneapolis Fed
• Unemployment and Foreclosure Rates Drive Housing Market Risk – ATTOM

From a paper by Diego Andrés Cardoso López, Jesús Antonio López Cabrera & Tatiana Isabel
Caly Amador:

“Rural employment is pivotal to achieving the SDGs but remains structurally vulnerable—marked by high informality, seasonality, and climate exposure—which may weaken the canonical growth–unemployment link posited by Okun’s Law. In Latin America, where rural economies rely on climate-sensitive activities, temperature and precipitation shocks can disrupt productivity and labor absorption, calling for a reassessment of Okun’s relationship in rural contexts. This article analyzes the relationship between rural unemployment, real income growth, and climate variability in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico from 2012 to 2024 using a Panel Vector Autoregression (P-VARX) model. Results indicate that, contrary to Okun’s prediction, real income growth does not always lower rural unemployment. Climate shocks matter: in Brazil, higher temperatures decrease unemployment in short-run; in Colombia, precipitation shocks—with lags—increase unemployment; and in Mexico, temperature shocks lift unemployment on impact before a partial correction. Human capital reduces unemployment only in Colombia. Based on this evidence, we outline four policy directions: (i) mainstream climate adaptation into rural labor policy; (ii) expand inclusive employment programs that tackle informality and low productivity while aligning skills with labor demand; (iii) invest in rural education and targeted skilling for green and youth employment; and (iv) promote territorial, multisectoral local development and job creation with strong institutional support.”

From a paper by M. Krishna Naidu, and Dasari Rajesh Babu:

“India’s monetary buildup and structure changed substantially with the official adoption of Flexible Inflation Targeting in 2016, formalised through amendments to the Reserve Bank of India Act and operationalised by a statutory six-member Monetary Policy Committee. In this paper, we conduct a systematic conceptual analysis of the multifaceted impact of FIT on macroeconomic consistency in India, including price stability, output dynamics, exchange rate behaviour, monetary transmission efficacy, fiscal-monetary coordination, and the formation of inflation expectations. The study uses longitudinal data of macroeconomic parameters over 12 years (2012-2024). The methodology is a mixed-methods conceptual framework that includes descriptive statistical analysis, regime-phase comparisons, six-channel transmission mapping, and international bench marking with 7 inflation-targeting economies. The analysis shows a large fall in headline Consumer Price Index (CPI) Inflation from an average of 9.85% (2012-2016) before the IT. The paper’s conceptual contribution is the development of a cohesive analytical framework that concurrently assesses aims, scope, limitations, transmission channels, and cross-national insights. The findings affirm that India’s FIT is a conditionally effective regime—effective in managing expectations and reducing Inflation, but requiring institutional complementary to achieve the full macroeconomic stability benefit.”

On cross-country:

• BIS residential property price statistics, Q4 2025. Real global house prices fell by 0.6% year on year (yoy) at the end of 2025. Real prices were almost stable in advanced economies, while they continued to decrease in emerging market economies, especially in Asia. – BIS
• Global House Price Index: 1, 5 & 10 Year Changes by Country – Global Property Guide
• An Extreme Housing Bubble’s Cautionary Tale for the Rest of the World – Bloomberg

Working papers and conferences:

• Industrial Concentration, Property Values, and Municipal Bond Spreads – NBER
• The Heterogeneous Bank Lending Channel of Monetary Policy – NBER 
• Rental Prices and the Cost of Living in the United States, 1914-2006 – Philadelphia Fed
• Failing the Threshold: The Impact of Rising Interest Rates on Mortgage Borrowing – St. Louis Fed

On Australia and New Zealand:

• [Australia] Insights From New Data on Australian Housing Investors – Reserve Bank of Australia
• [Australia] How Australia’s Housing Market Became So Out of Reach. Ballooning property prices and rents have caused a housing affordability crisis in Australia. Can the government’s planned changes to property taxes fix the problem? – Bloomberg
• [Australia] Can Australia make housing more affordable without hurting tech start-ups? – The Straits Times
• [Australia] Australia’s property lobby would have us believe investors are selfless public servants. It’s just profiteering. Labor is right to wind back a system where taxpayers spend billions lining the pockets of those who treat housing like an asset class, not a basic need – The Guardian
• [New Zealand] The World’s Most Extreme Housing Boom Is Now Roiling an Entire Economy. New Zealand’s downturn shows the difficult trade-offs governments face in trying to restore home affordability. – Bloomberg
• [New Zealand] Why New Zealand’s Housing Bubble Burst – Bloomberg

On other countries:  

• [Cyprus] Cyprus’s Residential Property Market Analysis 2026 – Global Property Guide
• [Hong Kong] Hong Kong’s Residential Property Market Analysis 2026 – Global Property Guide
• [Italy] Italy’s Residential Property Market Analysis 2026 – Global Property Guide
• [Georgia] Georgia’s Residential Property Market Analysis 2026 – Global Property Guide
• [Switzerland] Housing squeeze in Swiss boom region fuels support for population cap – Reuters
• [Taiwan] Taiwan’s Residential Real Estate Market Analysis 2026 – Global Property Guide
• [United Kingdom] Time to ‘do the splits’ on your mortgage? Overstretched borrowers are finding ways to alleviate the pain of higher interest rates – FT

On prices, rent, and mortgage:    

• Mortgage Rates Hit a Nine-Month High in Blow to Prime Buying Season. The 30-year mortgage rate increased to 6.51% this week and looks poised to keep rising – Wall Street Journal
• Higher Rates, More Renovations – Apollo
• An Option That Can Help Cut Housing Prices Catches On. Preapproved plans trim weeks or months off the process of getting a building permit. “Every month of delay adds costs that ultimately land on the buyer,” one housing expert said. – New York Times
• Case-Shiller: National House Price Index Up 0.7% year-over-year in March. FHFA House Prices Up 0.1% in March; Up 1.7% Year-over-year – Calculated Risk
• AEI National Home Price Appreciation (HPA) Index: April 2026 – AEI
• Inflation Adjusted House Prices 3.7% Below 2022 Peak. Price-to-rent index is 10.3% below 2022 peak – Calculated Risk
• U.S. House Prices Rise 1.7 Percent Year over Year; Up 0.5 percent Quarter over Quarter – FHFA
• Loans for Home Purchase at 12-Year Low – ATTOM
• US mortgage rate rises to nine-month high, worsening affordability again – Reuters
• Bipartisan Bill Would Boost Rental Housing Supply With New Deduction – Reuters

On sales, permits, starts, and supply:     

• US single-family housing starts tumble in April – Reuters
• Northeast and Midwest housing markets are the tightest heading into summer 2026. With less overvaluation, lower exposure to the recent migration pullback, and fewer homebuilders offering large incentives, active inventory across these regions remains relatively tight. – Fast Company
• Custom Home Building – A Bright Spot for Construction – NAHB
• Can This Guy Get People to Live in America’s Emptiest Downtown? Developer Asher Luzzatto has targeted Denver for one of the most radical experiments yet in converting vacant commercial space into residential units – Wall Street Journal
• First Quarter 2026 Multifamily Construction Data – NAHB
• The Housing Market’s Latest Hurdles: Copper, Lumber, Diesel and Aluminum. Typical American homes use more than 400 pounds of copper—and that’s a problem when prices soar – Wall Street Journal

On other developments:    

• Mixed Signals: A Housing Update for the Washington, D.C., Metro Area – Richmond Fed
• These Red-Hot Housing Markets Are Finally Getting More Attainable. A stark inventory mismatch is bedeviling housing markets across the country, but areas like Denver and Honolulu are showing improvement – Wall Street Journal
• 2 progressive titans on Capitol Hill split over housing bill. Elizabeth Warren and Maxine Waters have partnered with Republicans in their respective chambers — instead of each other — on a landmark housing bill. – Politico
• The Apartment Megamerger That Shows Landlords Are in Trouble. Equity Residential and AvalonBay’s $69 billion deal follows years of weak profits and slow to no rent growth – Wall Street Journal
• Congress Has a Housing Bill. Trump Has Other Priorities – Bloomberg
• The White House wants to eliminate housing funds. Republicans aren’t having it. – Politico
• How the Iran War Put Housing’s Spring Thaw Back on Ice – Wall Street Journal
• Mamdani targets housing holdouts. The city will explore land use changes in areas with the lowest rates of affordable housing production. – Politico
• Will Congress Pass the Housing Bill? Trump has been trying to kill bipartisanship, but this is one bipartisan bill that Trump desperately needs. – The American Prospect
• A Bipartisan Housing Fiasco. The new House legislation will raise costs and give more power to regulators. – Wall Street Journal
• ‘Symbolic about who’s in charge’: Lawmakers vote to crack down on Wall Street landlords. A popular policy to limit large institutional investors’ ownership of housing is unlikely to impact most Americans. – Politico
•  Luxury Buyers From Colombia Are Snapping Up South Florida Homes in Search of a Real Estate Safety Net – Realtor.com
• How the Iran War Put Housing’s Spring Thaw Back on Ice – Wall Street Journal
• America’s housing market decline is ‘no longer just a Sun Belt story’—LA and Dallas are tumbling, too – Fortune
• Zohran Mamdani’s housing confiscation scheme. The New York mayor wants to seize properties from landlords who don’t maintain their units. – Washington Post
• Mamdani pledges housing ‘transformation’ to tackle central affordability challenge. The mayor is not reinventing the wheel on many housing issues and is leaning into policies championed by his predecessors. – Politico
• How Chattanooga Boosted Affordable Housing Without Direct Subsidies – Realtor.com