Prof. of policy, planning and demography at USC; expert housing, immigration, children / seniors / Millennials, & racial change. Demog narrative & viz.
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 https://t.co/bIQzN1HzKK
@LeeHepner Here’s what’s really depressing: the bulk of California’s housing shortage was accrued BEFORE 2019, and now the cost escalation post 2019 offers little hope of building more so we can catch up
@ProducerCities These are annual average gross in-movers or net? Or there are annual average gross local movers? Or these are combined local movers and gross in-movers?
@ProducerCities After 2 decades of encouraging centralization, now it’s back sprawl again, or at least decentralization to a web of outer urban small places
@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!
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!
@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).