How old is the first-time homebuyer? Turns out, the best answer is probably, "Mid-/late 30s" and "a bit older than in 2010."

$0.28 → $0.07 as Supreme Court hears arguments for/against birthright citizenship ban

Other than a flurry of articles recently, what's going on here? Supreme Court session hasn't even started yet. Is it a liquidity thing? Volume is $232K.

Weird proof of my own personal AI productivity boom, booking travel feels way more annoying now. Thinking about what I can do with an AI-assisted hour today vs. 1 hour planning routes, booking flights/hotels/etc. for a multi-city trip. The difference is so much wider now than 3-4 mos ago.

Book-ins to ICE facilities, a precursor to deportation, have been roughly matching 2019 rates.

Before today, DHS secretary‑nominee Mullin has been publicly in favor of current immigration enforcement levels and tactics. Not expecting any big U-turn on enforcement action, targeting, deportation levels, etc.

In 1950s-60s, UK brides and grooms married younger than any point since at least 1550. Why? A big reason is the the post-WW2 job market...

@bencarlson007.bsky.social's bookshelf game, impressive. Really need to get step up. Oh and conversation was great too. "When do Baby Boomers' homes hit the market?" is one of the most-asked questions clients/others ask. We go into that and a bunch more. www.youtube.com/watch?v=utrU...

Just talked about this on a podcast. Baby boomers (and older) are 23% of the population but 43% of homeowners. They're also living longer, more active, and wealthier than their parents - and most never want to move.

Slowly but surely, work-from-home creeps lower. Low white-collar hiring probably brings this national figure lower over time, with very different paths regionally.

What @edzarenski.bsky.social describes is the *exact* result predicted by Howard, Wang, and Zhang (2025)... Immigration enforcement causes "significant loss of undocumented workers in construction" AND "net job losses for US-born workers." papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

My entire experience with Copilot, so far

US deaths held steady at 3.1 million in 2025, in line with the path from before 2020. We'll see this inch up every year from now on.

After declining for 13 years, US births have held steady since 2021. Why? Moms 30 and up are having more kids than ever, offsetting the long-term decline for moms under 30.

US births held steady at 3.62 million in 2025, near a 40+ year low.

Been saying 'Silver Tsunami' will more be a 'slow trickle'

US homes transferred by inheritance jumped 26% to 342K last year (source: Cotality) Not what you'd expect in a silver tsunami.

1.2 million excess deaths during pandemic did not kneecap housing demand. In fact, housing demand boomed. In 2020–2022, the number of homes lived in as primary residence grew at the fastest pace since probably the 1970s.

We (JBREC) have survey evidence showing there is in fact impact on occupancy and leasing. Different impacts by region, but it's definitely showing up.

Pretty good news, huh: Millennial parents spend more time with kids previous generations. Especially moms, but dads too. ...AND the average family has fewer kids. So that means the average kid is getting more mom-and-dad-time than ever before.

Ah, turns out AP is reporting the ban does not apply to non-immigrant (e.g., tourism) visas. Bloomberg's article didn't distinguish.

Brookings and CBO agree US immigration slowed dramatically in 2025. Neither expects a significant rebound in 2026.

Pulse check on immigration enforcement. Source: YouGov Survey, ICE Policies and Practices January 9 - 11, 2026 - 1,129 U.S. adult citizens

I think this is important. Success anchoring to increasingly fat tailed distributions. Reaching top 1% income is higher climb than ever. At the same time, the world is flatter than ever (the poorest 1% can follow the ramblings of the world's richest 24/7, and vice versa).

An under-appreciated "demographic cliff" of the next 20 years: Social Security Administration is extremely optimistic on both net immigration and birth rates, leading to unrealistic population assumptions. When (or if) they right-size their views, future social security benefits could be at risk.

Not a lot of labor switching between resi and data center construction.

Fascinating to see seasonality and multi-year cycles in the share of monthly births to first-time moms. Seasonality: typically peaks in Nov-Jan, bottoms in Jun Multi-year trends: rose through 2009, fell 2010-2019, rising again 2020-2025

Headline on our Pro Remodeling survey last month was "Pro remodeling hits new cycle low"

2025 feels early 2000s-ish. Solid GDP and a terrible job market. Americans are just as concerned about losing their jobs as in 2008-2009, which is pretty wild if true. Just one reason for homes sales aren't rising with lower mortgage rates.

Lines up with research we sent to clients last week calling out Walmart HQ's metro as 1 of ~15 local housing markets most exposed to H-1B changes, based on analysis of loan-level data by citizenship status.

2 recent immigration policy shifts affecting housing: 1) FHA banned lending to H-1B visa holders & other immigrants without permanent residency. 2) New $100,000 fee for companies applying to bring new H-1B workers into the US. Vastly different impacts market by market… jbrec.com/insights/imm...

Waller: likely that employment "actually shrank" in May, June, and July

Waller: Payroll jobs likely declined May-July "After accounting for the revisions that will be coming at some point... the data are likely to indicate that employment actually shrank—was negative—over those three months [May, June, and July]." www.youtube.com/live/EoHz0l3...

Worth watching: Incremental +300K international students per year would be a +40% increase over current student visa levels. Potentially a big deal for major city apartment demand, and a bailout of US universities at risk from a declining population of US high school seniors.

Our internal data shows households moving between metro areas spiked in 2021 and has fallen by 29% since. Long-distance moves are rare in 2025.

To add to this: The foreign-born sample in CPS is -12% since last August. Nativity is not part of population controls, so assuming the foreign-born population didn't drop 12%, weighted results will show declining numbers of immigrants. So looks like fewer immigrant workers. Don't use CPS for this.

Two charts on shifting housing demand: 1) Homeowners declining in 2Q, first in 9 years 2) Renters continue surging, up +1.6M since 2023 What happens next depends on homebuilder margins, SFR buyers, land sellers, ICE staffing/deportations, job growth, life expectancy, & rates, to name a few.

Opening move to a citizenship question in the 2030 Census? One study shows that asking about citizenship would have caused 4.2 million Hispanics to be "missed" in the 2010 count. (That'd be almost 6 million with today's larger Hispanic population.)

Native born employment and population may appear higher because… people are now self reporting that they were born in the US rather than abroad.

Immigrants are leaving the US workforce in very large numbers. Remittance payments US→MX plummeting, down 2+ million from a year ago. Biggest decline in >30 years - a period that includes a homebuilding depression and a 100-year financial crisis.

Affordability is rerouting housing growth. @conorsen.bsky.social of @opinion.bloomberg.com cites research from @ericfinnigan.jbrec.com and Chris Porter of @jbrec.com on migration shifts from Austin to San Antonio and beyond. www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Labor costs aren't currently going up for homebuilders because we're in a homebuilding recession. I'm thinking about the next cycle, and the 1.4M new homes needed every year to keep up with household growth. Watch out for "hockey stick"-shaped labor cost inflation in the next cycle.

ICE raids are hitting Western Union's US→Mexico money-sending business. More evidence that immigration enforcement is disrupting the construction industry (and others). US→Mexico is the largest remittance channel globally ($60B+ annually). Western Union leads in transaction volume.

We called out the importance of shorter-distance, affordability-driven migration back in March 2024, highlighting 3 other markets - Austin, Orlando, and Denver. jbrec.com/insights/3-m...

When resale housing warms back up, I believe this story is a taste of what's coming. Affordability-driven migration will create new winners & losers. It'll be fascinating to watch. That said, Atlanta has begun looking better in our internal migration data (through May 2025).

WILDLY different from early 2010s when millennials flocked to coastal mega-cities to work in tech and media. Geography of real estate and housing is undergoing similar shifts.

Homebuilders and remodeling contractors in our surveys have let us know about ICE raids' effect on residential construction over the past few months. Worth keeping an eye on this, as the BBB includes $170 billion in funding for larger-scale deportations.

ICE arrests hit over 1,000 per day in June. Today's Fed Beige Book mentions 5 ways this is impacting companies and consumers (🧵)

Why is Gen Z different? Important context here... And in some ways, this probably understates the inflation effect by leaving out student loan burdens. Millennials took out a lot of student debt too, but could refi during ZIRP.

On Sumitomo Forestry's $29M acquisition of Teal Jones Louisiana Holdings: "Sumitomo is now positioned to control the supply of a key input (Southern Yellow Pine lumber) from forest to frame." www.thebuildersdaily.com/sumitomos-ti...