The case for calling the housing market a bubble:
- home prices have shot up
- the market's "frenzy"
@RobertJShiller described this aspect of bubbles to me as "a sort of epidemic of an idea, of a feeling of what one should do with one’s life or leisure or what’s cool."
More reasons:
- Many arguments against bubble-theory are that the fundamentals (low interest rates, Millennials entering the market) would of course lead to higher prices.
But as @AliWolfEcon explains, that's been true for years. So why the rapid price increase now?
The case against:
- Well, the fundamentals. There's a lot less supply because of historically low under-building and there's a lot more demand! Personal savings rate is up so people can afford downpayments etc. etc.
But why does it matter? Obviously we care if a crash would lead to a massive recession.
But last year's & this year's average home buyer has a great credit score and is less likely to default on their mortgage than during the last housing bust.
Either way, the long term solutions to our housing crises are the same. There are not enough homes. Starter homes in particular are at drastic lows.
But historic under-building especially in job-rich areas is going to continue creating bad market dynamics unless resolved.
While "housing bubble" questions are extraordinarily popular, the fundamental problem is less exciting. So I put it in there at the bottom for the real readers.
I have held for a long time, despite many critiques from my left, that it is good that Abundance is a bipartisan project. But that bipartisanship is not content-less, it is rooted in shared classically liberal values.
The national conservatives and the post-liberal right have shown themselves to be defined by a scarcity mindset, a zero-sum view of the world, of economics, of democracy, and of the American project that is antithetical to abundance at its core.
Anyone who thinks they don't belong in the tent I outlined below has chosen to disqualify themselves from a project of abundance, liberty, equality, and pluralism.
If Thomas or anyone at FAI would like to write an article expressing their commitment to classically liberal values and/or criticizing the post-liberal right and the National Conservatives for abandoning the American project, the email is pitches@theargumentmag.com. I would be eager to publish it!
Funnily enough though, I don't remember Thomas or any of the folks at FAI complaining about being tied to the National Conservative project when Teles put it in his definition of Dark Abundance
New >> This is a piece I've been thinking about and working up to for several years. It is, in my opinion, about the most important challenge liberals face:
What to do about the politics of immigration?
Without immigration, America is destined for economic decline.
But the backlash to Biden’s border chaos helped re-elect Trump, who unleashed mass deportations. That experiment has already failed on its own terms.
So liberals face a trap:
Do nothing, and hope the thermostat of public opinion saves us.
Or embrace Trumpism with woke-ish characteristics.
Permitting and regulatory requirements are essentially costless to fix. I could ctrl-F any zoning code in the country and easily delete the minimum lot size reqs/parking minimums.
Rates are different! The Fed doesn't have a mandate to care about housing starts.
Secondly, the financing environment is responsive to the regulatory environment.
Developers struggle to get banks to finance innovative products like ADUs and modular housing etc because they're weird and banks are risk averse!
I like @MattBruenig's piece on Abundance today and I wanted to offer my two cents of what connects housing, energy, and transit projects under one umbrella.
/thread
First, all of these are land use issues! The pathologies I reported on in housing are evident on energy and transit, despite the vast differences in the underlying technologies, financing issues and political valences.
Sorry to just talk MY book but...
Second, because these are land use issues they are mired in the bad parts of federalism & localism: extreme decentralization of power; multiple, overlapping agencies; and the ability of special interest to wreak havoc without real oversight.
This has been a problem with this discourse from the beginning. People like @RoKhanna read "investors" and assume it means institutional investors/PE but that's not what the cited research says!
Redfin defines investors as ANY institution or business that purchases residential real estate.
But the bill @RoKhanna points to only focuses on cases where the investor's assets exceed $100 million! Which is NOT the majority of investors he says are distorting sub-markets.
According to CoreLogic at the end of last year, mom-and-pop landlords (who own 3-10 properties) are the majority of real estate investors. This is not a new finding, I have been pointing this out for years!
New >> California and New York are projected to lose up to 8 electoral votes in 2030. Texas and Florida are projected to gain 8.
If Kamala Harris had to compete with that map, even winning Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin wouldn’t have saved her.
Population migration to red states from blue ones isn’t an act of God, it’s the direct result of failed housing policies in Democratic led states.
And yet as Democratic governors jockey to lead the #resistance to Trump, none have tied their party’s waning influence nationally to the decisions by state and local officials to restrict the supply of housing.