The hottest Housing Substack posts right now

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Top U.S. Politics Topics

"Affordability" Isn’t Really What You Think

Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality • 246 implied HN points • 12 Dec 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Housing
  1. Median male full-time pay no longer by itself buys the single-earner middle-class life it used to, because spouses now contribute large shares of family income.
  2. Many rightwing men feel a painful loss of status when they can’t be sole breadwinners or when household authority shifts, and having more consumer goods doesn’t solve that dignity problem.
  3. For most people outside that TradLife slice, the affordability complaint is primarily about rising nominal prices and a broken social contract—especially for housing, childcare, college, and medical care—rather than a lack of real improvements in goods.

Governments Do the Bad Things That Sound Good

Bet On It • 266 implied HN points • 04 Dec 25
🌍 World Politics Housing
  1. Immigration bans throw away enormous economic gains; when migrants do cause real harms, it makes more sense to measure those harms and use taxes or transfers to fix or compensate, not to close the door.
  2. People often say culture matters more than money, but their choices (not moving away) suggest cultural attachment is weaker than claimed, so cultural costs rarely outweigh big material benefits from migration.
  3. Housing rules that block building ignore that denser living has large net benefits people are willing to pay for; policymakers should allow more construction and deal with specific nuisances using targeted charges instead of blanket bans.

America's Housing Rebound

The Overshoot • 1316 implied HN points • 20 Jan 24
đź’Ľ Business Housing
  1. Despite high mortgage rates, construction and renovation spending in the US housing market have been holding steady or accelerating.
  2. Housing sales and construction are greatly impacted by changes in monetary policy and credit availability.
  3. The rebound in house prices and construction reflects the broader growth and asset price acceleration in the US economy post-pandemic.

“We Are Not as Wealthy as We Thought We Were”: Part 1

Erdmann Housing Tracker • 210 implied HN points • 19 Dec 25
đź’° Finance Housing
  1. A chronic housing supply shortage, not just short-term bubbles, is the main reason home prices and rents are high; cyclical swings now sit on top of a rising neutral price level.
  2. Measured home equity overstates real wealth because a large share of home prices is a rent premium created by scarcity, so Americans are poorer than headline net worth suggests.
  3. Policy choices and the post‑2008 lending shock reshaped who captured housing wealth and left many places and low‑income households worse off, causing geographic sorting where families pay high rents to stay put.

New York Can’t Afford to Sideline Private Developers

QTR’s Fringe Finance • 21 implied HN points • 25 Feb 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Housing
  1. New York needs to build many more homes where people want to live, and the private sector is essential because the city can’t afford to pay for all the new housing itself.
  2. Policies that sideline developers—like strict tenant controls, talk of expropriation, or big public housing plans—discourage investment and reduce the supply of rental housing, which tends to raise rents.
  3. Given tight city finances and the risk of people and firms leaving if taxes rise, the practical way to close the housing gap is to work with private builders and use market-driven solutions.
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Many Victorian cities grew by tenfold in a century

The Works in Progress Newsletter • 55 implied HN points • 03 Feb 26
đź’ľ History Housing
  1. Cities in the nineteenth century grew hugely while getting better: wide, connected street networks, modern sewers, running water and mass transit let homes become larger and more affordable relative to incomes.
  2. Governments used regulated monopolies, concessions or municipal companies and charged users enough to pay for big upfront costs. That alignment of private profit and public benefit let operators build coherent, non‑duplicative networks.
  3. Since 1914 many of those arrangements unraveled and were replaced by zoning, price controls and subsidies, which slowed growth and worsened housing affordability. Cities that want faster growth and more housing should consider permissive building rights, coordinated street planning, and financing models that align private incentives with public goods.

An article at the Hill

Erdmann Housing Tracker • 84 implied HN points • 22 Jan 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Housing
  1. Housing costs are eating up renters' budgets and families need clear, practical economic solutions instead of political knee-jerk reactions.
  2. The administration can change lending rules at federal housing agencies and could restore older, more reasonable standards.
  3. Bringing back those lending standards would help regular families compete with Wall Street and make homeownership more affordable and financially responsible.

Don't wreck the Planning Bill!

Odds and Ends of History • 1005 implied HN points • 21 Jul 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Housing
  1. The Planning and Infrastructure Bill aims to make it easier to build homes and infrastructure in Britain. This is important for addressing problems like the housing crisis.
  2. Recent amendments to the Bill could weaken its effectiveness by adding more legal hurdles for developers. This may slow down the building process instead of speeding it up.
  3. The government should avoid compromising on the Bill and focus on its original goals. If it does not work effectively, it won't solve the issues it aimed to address.

Update: The Housing Bubble and Mortgage Debt as a Percent of GDP

CalculatedRisk Newsletter • 114 implied HN points • 05 Jan 26
đź’° Finance Housing
  1. The housing bubble was visible as a sharp rise in mortgage debt relative to GDP, but current mortgage debt as a share of GDP does not show the same alarming pattern.
  2. Lending standards are much stronger now, and most recent mortgage originations come from borrowers with reasonably good credit.
  3. Most homeowners have significant equity and affordable, low-rate mortgages, so a large wave of distressed sales and cascading price declines is unlikely.

“We Are Not as Wealthy as We Thought We Were”: Part 6

Erdmann Housing Tracker • 126 implied HN points • 02 Jan 26
đź’° Finance Housing
  1. Rising home prices are mostly coming from rising rents, so higher price/rent ratios often reflect persistent rent inflation rather than just speculative price swings. Because officials treated the problem as a bubble and tightened demand after 2008, they made rent-driven scarcity worse.
  2. Most of the price growth is coming from land rents caused by a shortage of new urban housing, amplified by stricter mortgage access and local land-use restrictions. This scarcity has hit lower-tier neighborhoods hardest, raising housing costs for poorer families.
  3. Viewing expensive housing as mainly a luxury or positional good led to bad policy choices like restricting credit instead of addressing supply and access. Policy should focus on how mortgage access and supply constraints harm households forced to move, not just on high-end buyers or headline wealth numbers.

A Scarcity of Abundance

Bet On It • 935 implied HN points • 09 Jul 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Housing
  1. Housing can improve through deregulation, and it's already happening in places like California. This sparks hope for better access and affordability.
  2. Transportation and energy need big improvements too, but current efforts often focus too much on rules rather than building better infrastructure and supporting new energy projects.
  3. The book suggests that big government hasn't been effective, especially in places run by one party, and it might be more beneficial to focus on accountability and smarter use of funds.

What new towns can learn from Ebbsfleet

Odds and Ends of History • 804 implied HN points • 01 Aug 25
🎭️ Culture Housing
  1. Ebbsfleet is a unique example of a new town in Britain that can teach us both what to do and what to avoid when building new communities. It's important to learn from past successes and failures.
  2. New towns should be built close to transport links, like train stations, to make them accessible and attractive to residents.
  3. Proper planning is crucial. If new towns are poorly designed, like too car-centric or isolated, residents can feel disconnected and unhappy.

talking sense on housing affordability

bad cattitude • 203 implied HN points • 14 Nov 25
đź’° Finance Housing
  1. Housing prices have increased recently, but they were quite affordable before 2021. It's important to understand this context when discussing affordability.
  2. Interest rates play a big role in housing costs, and rising rates can make homes much more expensive over time.
  3. To truly improve housing affordability, we need to increase the supply of homes and make construction easier, rather than just adding subsidies.

Q4 NY Fed Report: Credit Scores for Mortgages Still Solid, Foreclosures Increase Slightly

CalculatedRisk Newsletter • 28 implied HN points • 10 Feb 26
đź’° Finance Housing
  1. Household debt rose in Q4 2025, driven by increases in mortgage balances and higher credit card balances.
  2. Delinquency rates edged up as more mortgages moved into 30–60 day late status and fewer loans cured back to current, while foreclosures increased slightly but remain below pre‑pandemic levels.
  3. Mortgage originations show strong credit quality (median score ~775) with almost no new loans to borrowers below 620, reflecting much tighter underwriting than during the housing bubble.

The Line Must Be Drawn Here

The Column • 1297 implied HN points • 24 Mar 23
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Housing
  1. A critique of permitting developers to make apartments without bedroom windows to address housing shortage.
  2. The push to lower housing standards by eliminating regulations is becoming more mainstream.
  3. The argument that bedrooms with sunlight and fresh air are unnecessary is criticized for pushing standards to the bare minimum.

Effective Urban Planning in 10 Simple Steps

Exasperated Infrastructures • 33 implied HN points • 02 Feb 26
🪑 Design Housing
  1. Decide carefully about planning school and commit to being a lifelong learner; pick a technical specialty you can go deep on while also learning the adjacent fields that shape your work.
  2. Develop clear core values and a reasoned point of view, and learn the local politics and history so your projects actually fit the people and place you’re serving.
  3. Build relationships by showing up, be open to moving between public/private/nonprofit work, ask for help politely, and protect yourself from burnout while you persist through the field’s counterintuitive challenges.

Abundists Should Hedge Their Bets

Abstraction • 24 implied HN points • 05 Feb 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Housing
  1. Housing supply reforms are the right long-term fix but they act slowly and invisibly, so voters may not notice benefits or may even blame reforms for short-term price or value changes.
  2. Remote work immediately unlocks a large 'shadow' housing supply by letting people move to cheaper places, which lowers competition for city housing and gives families quick, tangible time and cost relief.
  3. Cities are pushing return-to-office to protect municipal revenues, which harms families with long commutes, so defending remote work is a practical, pro-family political strategy that buys time for slower housing reforms.

Fannie Mae Multi-Family Delinquency Rate Almost to Housing Bust High

CalculatedRisk Newsletter • 71 implied HN points • 26 Dec 25
đź’° Finance Housing
  1. Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac saw single-family serious delinquency rates rise to about 0.58% in November, a small month-over-month and year-over-year increase but still below pre-pandemic highs.
  2. Delinquency is concentrated in older loan vintages: Fannie’s 2004-and-earlier and 2005–2008 loans have much higher serious delinquency rates, while loans from 2009–2025 show very low delinquency.
  3. Fannie Mae’s multi-family delinquency rate has climbed to its highest level since the housing bust (excluding the pandemic), signaling rising stress in the multi-family sector.

Credit Access at Fannie & Freddie

Erdmann Housing Tracker • 147 implied HN points • 11 Nov 25
đź’° Finance Housing
  1. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are changing credit score rules, which could help more people access mortgages. This is a positive step, especially for those with lower credit scores.
  2. There's a concern that past events, like the 2008 financial crisis, make people wary of easing lending standards. Many people still express fear about potential risks in the mortgage market.
  3. The current changes to mortgage access are different from the past crisis. Ensuring loans are available to responsible buyers could boost homeownership and help stabilize the housing market.

December 2025 Erdmann Housing Tracker Update

Erdmann Housing Tracker • 42 implied HN points • 16 Jan 26
đź’° Finance Housing
  1. The housing market is in a long, slow recovery: construction, rents, and prices are gradually rising and a housing shortage makes a conventional recession hard to trigger.
  2. Measured inflation is roughly at the 2% target once shelter is excluded, but recent CPI gains are mainly driven by rent/shelter and a bit of tariff-driven noise.
  3. Policy and shocks matter: tariffs and looser Fed policy could lift inflation again, but without a major shock or chaotic policy change the slow recovery should keep chugging along as new homebuilding slowly raises capacity.

Inflation Adjusted House Prices 2.4% Below 2022 Peak

CalculatedRisk Newsletter • 28 implied HN points • 28 Jan 26
đź’° Finance Housing
  1. In nominal terms, the Case-Shiller National and Composite 20 indexes hit new all-time highs in November, just above the prior peak from early 2025.
  2. Adjusted for inflation, national house prices are about 2.4% below their recent peak (and roughly 10.1% above the older bubble peak), while the Composite 20 is about 2.6% below its 2022 peak.
  3. The price-to-rent ratio is down about 9.6% from its 2022 high, and rising inventory plus persistent inflation pushed real house prices roughly 1.5% lower through November 2025.

The powerlessness of Michaela Ali

The Mill • 766 implied HN points • 16 Sep 23
đź“° News Housing
  1. Michaela Ali, a pregnant health worker, has been living in hotels due to her rat-infested flat for over a year.
  2. Despite complaints to the housing association, Riverside, Michaela has felt powerless and unmoored in trying to make her living situation habitable.
  3. The experience has left Michaela feeling hopeless and untrusting, highlighting the challenges faced by social housing tenants in getting their living conditions improved.

Housing and 'a global wall of money'

System Change • 687 implied HN points • 06 Jun 23
đź’Ľ Business Housing
  1. The housing crisis in Britain is not just about supply and demand, but also about a global wall of money inflating housing values.
  2. Speculation in the property market is fueling high house prices, not a shortage of supply.
  3. To make housing more affordable, measures like property speculation tax and managing speculative capital flows are needed.

Do politicians need Legos to explain housing on social media?

The New Urban Order • 219 implied HN points • 25 Mar 24
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Housing
  1. Using creative and simple methods, like Legos, can effectively convey complex topics like housing supply and demand to a wider audience on social media.
  2. Politicians can make their housing messages more engaging by focusing on simple but impactful messages, avoiding getting lost in technical details.
  3. Creating approachable and visually appealing social media content can help elevate the dialogue around housing issues and engage a broader audience in the conversation.

Five small signs of progress... and what Skegness can teach us about infrastructure

Odds and Ends of History • 402 implied HN points • 02 Jun 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Housing
  1. There are some good signs of progress in infrastructure, like the government's plans for new reservoirs.
  2. Old Oak Common station is making strides in construction, showing that big infrastructure projects can move forward.
  3. Skegness's history highlights the importance of good infrastructure for success and how current issues affect politics.

Economics Links, 5/16/2025

In My Tribe • 364 implied HN points • 16 May 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Housing
  1. The China shock might not be as bad as people think; cheap imports could help U.S. manufacturers by lowering their costs and making them more competitive.
  2. In Los Angeles, strict zoning laws have made housing scarce. This has led to high home prices and an increase in homelessness, making it tough for many to afford a place to live.
  3. Republicans are facing challenges with the federal budget, especially with rising entitlement spending. It's hard to fix the deficit by just cutting other spending without reforming entitlements.

Notes on Erdmann Metro Area Housing Estimates: Part 2

Erdmann Housing Tracker • 63 implied HN points • 01 Dec 25
đź’Ľ Business Housing
  1. The housing market has seen a rise in scarcity premiums, meaning the land under homes has become more expensive due to a lack of housing. This affects how valuable land is in different cities.
  2. Real estate development can be risky due to various market conditions, but areas with higher scarcity premiums may offer better investment opportunities in the long run.
  3. Understanding the trends in housing prices, rents, and scarcity can help local policymakers and developers make better decisions for their communities.

House builders are not a bunch of bankers

Odds and Ends of History • 268 implied HN points • 14 Jul 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Housing
  1. Housing developers aren't the greedy land-bankers people often think they are. In fact, many factors affecting their work are quite broken.
  2. There's a new plan to possibly build Heathrow's third runway before the election, which could change how we handle infrastructure projects.
  3. Focusing on time management can help speed up large projects. A surprising example is how a nuclear plant was approved in just three days!

7 Charts Show the Housing Tipping Point Has Arrived

The New Urban Order • 199 implied HN points • 04 Mar 24
đź’Ľ Business Housing
  1. There is a significant increase in multifamily housing supply, signaling a potential tipping point in the housing industry.
  2. Cities like Minneapolis that have increased housing supply are seeing a decrease in rent prices, showcasing the impact of supply and demand in the housing market.
  3. The increase in housing supply across the U.S. is leading to declines in rent prices in many major markets, demonstrating the effectiveness of increasing supply to address housing affordability.

What will 2026 bring?

Erdmann Housing Tracker • 21 implied HN points • 21 Jan 26
đź’° Finance Housing
  1. Metro-area analyses act as 'all else equal' forecasts, so they project outcomes assuming other factors don’t change while still needing to account for many variables.
  2. A near-zero 2025 home-price forecast (about 0.1%) matched the observed change in the Zillow Home Value Index, showing that small, precise forecasts can be accurate.
  3. The outlook for 2026 calls for roughly 3% home-price appreciation, even though expert forecasts for 2025 varied widely from about -2% to 10.8%.

FHFA’s Q3 National Mortgage Database: Outstanding Mortgage Rates, LTV and Credit Scores

CalculatedRisk Newsletter • 33 implied HN points • 30 Dec 25
đź’° Finance Housing
  1. A big share of outstanding fixed-rate mortgages still carry very low pandemic-era rates: loans under 4% peaked at 65.1% (now 51.5%) and loans under 5% peaked at 85.6% (now 68.6%).
  2. Those low existing rates created a strong lock-in that kept many homeowners from selling because replacing their mortgage would sharply raise monthly payments, and that helped depress available home inventory.
  3. That lock-in is slowly eroding — the share of loans above 6% rose from 7.3% in Q2 2022 to 21.2% in Q3 2025, which should gradually increase mobility in the market.

Case Study: Template House

Supernuclear • 299 implied HN points • 11 Jan 24
🎭️ Culture Housing
  1. Template House is an intentional community in San Francisco supporting individuals coming out of long-term incarceration.
  2. The community focuses on justice, care, and kinship while emphasizing shared values and deep connections.
  3. Template House aims to transition to a land trust for long-term preservation and is seeking financial support for this transition.

A Tale of Three Housing Bubbles

Taipology • 185 implied HN points • 21 Jul 25
đź’° Finance Housing
  1. Japan's housing bubble in the 1980s showed how quickly prices can soar, but when it burst, the country faced decades of economic struggles. The banks kept rolling over bad debts, making it hard for healthy businesses to get loans.
  2. In the United States, the housing bubble led to a crisis, but aggressive monetary policies helped stabilize the economy. This also created long-term debt issues, as easy money became a habit, allowing reckless spending.
  3. China is trying to manage its housing bubble differently by avoiding bailouts and redirecting credit to productive industries. While many feel the current pain, this proactive approach aims to prevent a financial crisis like those seen in Japan and the U.S.

A non-emergency podcast about the climate emergency

Odds and Ends of History • 201 implied HN points • 21 Jul 25
🌞 Climate & Environment Housing
  1. The government may be making mistakes with its Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which could impact housing and environmental policies. It's important to pay attention to these changes and their consequences.
  2. Declaring a 'climate emergency' means little if no real actions are taken to address it. It's not just about saying the words; effective measures are required.
  3. A new fund has been created to help with housing in London, emphasizing the need to meet housing targets and the debate around the green belt. Conversations around these issues are crucial for future planning.

Humanity's Housing Future: Five Families to One House With Four Empty Airbnbs In Between

Surviving Tomorrow • 393 implied HN points • 26 Apr 23
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Housing
  1. When working people can't afford to stay alive, society is dead.
  2. House prices are rising due to economic corruptions like inflation, constricted supply, and investor demand.
  3. To fix the broken housing market, democratic inflation-free money, proper supply, and the end of parasitic investor demand are necessary.