How Many Houses Are Needed?

On today’s show we are talking about shifts in economic data that are coming fast and furious. The economic indicators are changing faster than at any time I can remember. In fact there are so many things happening right now that it was somewhat difficult to decide what to talk about today.

We’ve just had a historic interest rate increase on Wednesday of this week. The words of Jerome Powell have been headline makers. They have been picked apart and analyzed. For me, the biggest tell in that story is that there were no questions in the question period regarding the housing market.

Sometimes these economic indicators are changing daily. But we’re not going to talk about the interest rate increase.

Instead we’re going to examine why The National Association of Realtors continues to assert that there is a shortage of nearly 6.8 million homes across the United States. In fact, this statistic has been quoted in the news for an entire year and is almost widely accepted as fact.

In fact that first report came out on June 16, 2021.

Since then, the association has continued the narrative that the nation needs another 6.8M units. However, these statistics fail to hang together when you look at the data on a local level.

The key to this story is understanding demographics.

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Host: Victor Menasce

email: podcast@victorjm.com