Dowell Myers

New crisis of plunging residential mobility rates for renters in the US--why? Article in Housing Studies links shortages, falling homeownership, Millennials, affordability.... a puzzle to unravel. Paywall but summary here (1/n) #thread doi.org/10.1080/026730…

@KAErdmann So the rate falls because there are more renters (young people released from parents homes). Official owner rate is owners/HHs, but HHs are currently suppressed, so rate (blue line) is inflated. A false measure of prosperity for sure!

@kevinerdmann/note/c-227603815?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=2pxsw" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">substack.com/@kevinerdmann/…

@kendalljayyzhxu 1050

Answer is not "300" Tell me the answer and win $1000

@Croesus_BTC @smarterwebuk @asjwebley Bravo to the SWC team! May the confetti keep on flying

Today we listed @smarterwebuk on the London Stock Exchange. Honored to join @asjwebley in pressing the button The lady from LSE said if we don’t press it at exactly the right time, the stock exchange won’t start trading. She was joking, we think Onward and upward! 🎉🧡🫡

@asjwebley Extraordinary family roots for launching such upward mobility

Today we remember all those who made the ultimate sacrifice so that we can enjoy the freedoms we have today. Whatever your political views or wherever you live, I think it's important to remember what they fought and died for - and to protect our freedoms with respect for others. I am fortunate that my grandfather who served was one of the lucky ones - "Poppa" to me. Born in 1925, he proudly served as an RAF rear gunner in WWII and later as a police officer. He passed in 2010, aged 85. A true legend in my eyes - still miss you every day, Poppa. We will remember them.

@mnolangray Amen

Meanwhile, the work horse of workforce housing—naturally affordable market rentals and the filtering they drive—disappears, turning California into a neo-feudal state of untaxed landowners and the warehoused, income-restricted proles who serve them. sfchronicle.com/realestate/art…

The California housing doom loop: income-restricted affordable housing developments must pay "affordable housing" fees, to defray the cost of ever more expensive income-restricted affordable housing developments that pay "affordable housing" fees, to defray the...

@Arden_2210 18

Only For genius/ 0.1% will succeed If you solve this you deserve 1000$

DOJ subpoenas the Fed. 🚨 If the Fed loses independence to political and legal pressure, investors flee the US. This will result in: 💸 devalued dollar 📈 higher inflation 🏠 higher mortgage rates Watch the video for a breakdown of what's happening and why you should care.

Great explanations here—can all these factors be contributors? Seems true—the 3 by Lambert, plus Erdmann, and also Wake’s supply intricacies. But demand side is poorly represented. First, demand is much quicker to revive in each cycle than supply, with the bidding process pushing up prices, which incites higher price *expectations* and even more demand. Second, why the upward drift? Prices are sticky on the downside, because home buyers are invested and will attempt to avoid selling at a loss. After all, owners in middle age are prepared to often stay more than 20 years in their homes. Third, the roots of demand are poorly understood by housing economists. Income and credit have strong marginal effect, but the potential quantity of demand is derived from the number of people moving through critical ages for household formation and home buying. It’s not a steady flow but driven by larger or smaller age waves. Housing demography is at the root, as explained in the 2025 RSF census article on Misalignment of Housing Growth and Population Trends (open access). Failure to plan for generational size differences led to grievous policy errors in 2008-10 and the housing shortages that continue today. Housing is more complicated the deeper we look!

The hardest—and perhaps most important—question to ask housing economists remains: Why have real (inflation-adjusted) U.S. home prices, albeit with cyclical ups and downs, trended higher for decades?

@mnolangray Great point! But this cohort chart appears to stop with 2014 data. After that things really heated up. Show us more? Millennials caught up a lot (peak Millennial born 1990).

In recent years, California has done a lot to encourage the production of a handful of income-restricted apartments for low-income tenants. But it has done basically nothing to massively expand homeownership. This is why there's a middle class exodus out of the state.

California builds basically no condos. This is a real problem, as their starter homes of 2025. Here's what I've learned as to why. (1/n)

@NickWaranoff @TomSteyer Strong point about slow population growth nixing need for more housing? Okay, who wants to take this on?

@TomSteyer Why? CA population is projected to be level and then to decline. We do not need more homes.

Building more homes everywhere means building more homes everywhere. sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sf-…

@Songofaflea @RickPalaciosJr @DiMartinoBooth Sounds right! Why did ZIRP end?

@RickPalaciosJr @DiMartinoBooth What was it in 2000 to 2005 before the GFC? You really can’t compare ZIRP qualifying rates (2010 to 2022) to qualifying rates during a period of normal rates.

The qualified buyer pool for housing has shrunk immensely in recent years.

@Saveourcoast24 @RickPalaciosJr Yes, and that about describes all our young adult children. Do they really count? Ask Marjorie Taylor Greene.

@RickPalaciosJr So 65% own their homes, 15-20% live off government subsidies. So all the talk is about the 20% of people (some who don’t to or can’t buy a home ) driving all the dialogue about a “housing crisis”

@michael_wiebe This says it all very clearly!

Reminder that this is how new housing works, as backed up by published research.

@mnolangray 10 units is great! Also needs 1 or 2 street spots for temporary unloading of delivery vehicles. Plus resident parking underground.

One house turns into 10 homes in Palms, Los Angeles. (2018➡️2022)

@johnarnold That water jug is clearly over regulated (??)

Same price in Houston today. - Branded spring water: collect at nearby spring, filter at plant, bottle and truck to store. - Gasoline: Drill down 2 miles, turn sideways and continue another 2-4 miles. Run steel pipe and cement through hole. Punch small holes in pipe. Send water/sand mixture down pipe at extreme pressures to fracture rock. Separate streams of oil/gas/water at surface. Truck oil to nearest pipeline where it travels 800 miles to refinery. Treat crude to remove impurities. Heat crude to >700° to separate into different products including gasoline. Remove sulfur and other remaining contaminants. Move to large storage tank. Blend with ethanol, naptha, and other products that require complex chemistry to meet octane and clean fuel specs. Truck on specialized tanker to underground tank at gas station.

@KAErdmann Or it’s like a banker who doesn’t understand finance — how is that possible? From the Wharton school?

Incredible that in the year 2025 leading housing economists are still entirely ignorant about the effects of eliminatimy most of the sub-740 credit score mortgage market in 2008. It’s like astronomers not knowing about the moon. knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/what-w…

@Birdyword Should the ROI be based on total house price or just the down payment? With 20% down, return is 5X. WSJ knows this?

I agree with the sentiment here to a degree, BUT you have to do this as a total return with a stream of rental income for the housing, or it's bordering on a chart crime. And you've got to consider the volatility too.

What does an aging society mean?

Actually a serious point in urban planning research—as Don Shoup taught us, when parking is free, cars park all day and no one can find an open space. Property taxes are similar—discount the property tax the longer you stay and watch how no one can find a vacancy to occupy. Gridlocked!

@ProfDowellMyers @ResidentialClub It's funny -- CA home prices would be significantly more affordable if they didn't outlaw property tax increases.

Typical effective property tax rate by county, as calculated by ResiClub