Holy cow, rates up to 6.53% today! A borrower putting 20% down on a $600,000 home would pay $168 more now than they would have the day before the U.S. bombed Iran when rates were 5.99%. War is costly in innumerable ways, including the cost of homeownership.

If we want more people to be able to live in Manhattan on a modest salary, we don't need more rent stabilized apartments we need many, many more 380 sq ft apartments like this woman has. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Is Wall Street buying every house? Data says no. 🏠 Mega-investors own <1% of homes. The real culprits? A 4M-home shortage, NIMBYism, and the lock-in effect. Small mom & pop"landlords (22%) dwarf big firms. Watch for the full breakdown! 📊 youtu.be/78OrLE4DC9M

The housing market is hitting stagflation. Jobs are cooling, but the unauthorized war in Iran is keeping oil prices and rates high. Sellers are losing patience and re-listings are at a decade high, giving buyers more leverage.

Even though I'm an economist, I wish there was more focus on the human suffering from this war and less focus on the economic consequences. Hundreds of little girls are dead, and we're worried about oil prices.

I shit you not...Bert Kreischer discusses "The High Cost of Free Parking" with Pete Holmes at the 35 minute mark music.youtube.com/watch?v=aQjx...

The Road to Housing Act has gotten a lot of attention for banning institutional investors. That ban won't make housing more affordable, but the rule changes around manufactured homes could! Lets cut the bad parts and keep the good, and get this act passed.

Florida condo owners lost $60,000 in equity in one year. Orlando condo owners gained 11%. Same state. Same year. I break down exactly why — and what happens next. youtu.be/DMI7VZ36_Rk

My latest Youtube video (please subscribe, I'm really trying to do this for real now) Is Gen-Z completely priced out of homeownership—or are market shifts creating new opportunities? www.youtube.com/watch?si=-Ig...

California’s housing market is officially a landed gentry system. 🏠 New data from the Wall Street Journal: 1 in 5 of CA home transfers are now inheritances—double the US average. Does CA need to end Prop 13 to save the American Dream? 🧵👇

Come see me on the Planet Money book tour! Get your tickets and reserve your spot before its too late 🪐💵

My latest Youtube video (please subscribe, I'm really trying to do this for real now) Is Gen-Z completely priced out of homeownership—or are market shifts creating new opportunities? www.youtube.com/watch?si=-Ig...

🏗️The places that built the most housing during the pandemic have the fewest bidding wars, and the places that neglected to build have the most. 🏘️ See percent of homes selling above list price by county.

67% of Gen Z are struggling to afford their housing costs according to a recent Redfin report. 🏠📉 Between high rents, and a weak labor market, the struggle is real. Rents are coming down in the places that built the most during the pandemic: the solution is to build housing! 🏗️

@juanmoisesdelas.bsky.social could you send me the paper with the result you referred to? [email protected]. thanks

The housing markets that had the biggest pandemic booms in home prices are now the markets where it the most difficult to sell. See this graph showing the negative (-45%) correlation between share of home listings sold in two weeks in Jan 2026 and price growth from 2020-2022

Florida, Texas, Michigan, Nebraska, and Wyoming are moving to cut/eliminate property taxes. 🚨 Great news, right? Not if you’re trying to buy your first home. You'll be trading yearly taxes for higher home prices and increased sales tax.

My manager told me I wasn't ready to be chief economist. I already had the offer from Redfin. She'd downgraded my rating while I was on maternity leave, so Amazon couldn't even counter. Her only move was to scare me into thinking I would fail. To read the full story, grab my book, Hate the Game

Status quo bias keeps us stuck in comfortable habits that lead to dead ends. In a rapidly changing world, the default path is risky. If you wiped the slate clean, would you choose the path you are on? Grab my book Hate the Game for more.

I believe AI has increased the rate of return on capital, which explains why debt has become more expensive across the board. If you'd like to understand how AI is impacting every corner of the economy through the cost of debt, watch this video www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCMQ...

I believe AI has increased the rate of return on capital, which explains why debt has become more expensive across the board. If you'd like to understand how AI is impacting every corner of the economy through the cost of debt, watch this video www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCMQ...

In 2025, buying a home became more attainable, but affordability is still a major challenge for the middle class.

For Black History Month, I am exploring the history of Black homeownership in America 🏘️. Watch the two-part series on Youtube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3Ur...

In the age of AI, new information gathered by boots on the ground journalists should be more valuable not less. AI can't see, feel or touch what is happening in real time- it can only regurgitate what has already been reported. WaPo will reap what they sow, which won't be much.

Gen Z is buying homes, but it’s a trickle, not a flood. Redfin data shows their ownership rate hit 27.1% in 2025—still lagging behind previous generations. High costs are forcing a shift from picket fences to condos. We need land use reform to keep the dream alive. 🏠📉

The president has tapped Kevin Warsh for Fed Chair🏦 : a Wall Street insider who will likely favor market stability over political rate cuts. With home buying more affordable than last year, stable mortgage rates should give homebuyers more confidence.

Nearly two-thirds (62%) of homebuyers paid below list price in 2025—the highest share since 2019. The average discount was 7.9% ($31k+ savings), the largest since 2012. If you are buying a home, don’t let a sticker price scare you off. In this market, everything is negotiable. 🏠📉

Seattle folks, come see me on the Planet Money Book tour.

Sentimentality is expensive. 🏠 My advice? Don't read buyer "love letters." As Chief Economist at Redfin, I see how emotions cause sellers to leave money on the table. I explain why I prefer being "cold and calculating" in this clip from the It Turns Out Podcast. 👇

I'm horrified by what ICE and CBP have done, and I'm terrified that it will keep escalating.

Transit, Housing, and Energy are all connected, so it's great to see New York go all-in on all three areas. New York’s holistic approach is a victory for urbanists and the abundance movement.

It's remarkable how much energy costs are driving up inflation in the Northeast. And it's not data centers making energy more expensive, it's crumbling infrastructure and an over reliance on natural gas. Delaying necessary infrastructure investments hurts the economy!

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.

Financial engineering cannot fix a physical shortage. Whether it's portable mortgages or buying MBS, the new proposals miss the root cause: We simply aren't building enough homes where people most want to live. 🏘️

Please hold breaking housing news for the start of my workday. It's my first week back from winter break and I'm tired... www.cnbc.com/2026/01/08/t...

Many economists doubted AI until it hit their workflows. Now, tools like Claude Code do weeks of analysis in hours. As analysis becomes cheap, the real value shifts to novel ideas and gathering unique, proprietary data. (Video inspired by #EconSky)

Add housing to the list of economic indicators where men are lagging. While women heads of household have nearly recovered their pre-2008 homeownership rates, men remain down a massive 7.7 percentage points. (Chart created with help from Claude)

Trump says he will ban large investors from buying single family homes, but a ban is misguided. See what I wrote about corporate bans for Forbes last year:

Is disaster capitalism taking over wildfire impacted neighborhoods? Redfin data shows investors bought 40% of lots in wildfire-hit LA areas. To stop displacement, we need Community Land Trusts to keep housing affordable. Watch this video & read my article for Forbes. .

It's been one year since the Los Angeles Wildfires. I wrote about how natural disasters are displacing homeowners, and how property tax reform plus community land trusts can help with this issue @Forbes The Climate Fire Sale: How Disasters Turn Homeowners Into Renters share.google/l4R4COvoGgKS...

It turns out AI is a very big deal. Coding projects that would have taken weeks take a few hours. I know people don't like that it uses a lot of energy, but that's why we should cap and trade carbon emissions or tax carbon.

E-Pop Demon Hunters, but its @josephpolitano.bsky.social trying to account for immigration's impact on estimated population changes.

Organizing my house all day long. The perfect New Year's resolution because I can get it done in one day. Plus it's 5 degrees out, so if I'm not leaving the house I might as well make it more livable.

Them: you should get some rest. Me at rest:

The 2.7% inflation print is misleading. 🚫 Missing data due to the shutdown was assumed to be 0%, skewing results downward. This fishy🐟 data likely won't drop mortgage rates. As Redfin's Chief Economist, I'm waiting for December numbers for the real story. 👇

I should be posting about CPI, but I'm too busy reading the takes of data illiterate white supremacists. I gotta let them do what they do and refocus my energy.

Imagine being a Black woman colleague of Ross Douthat.

Applying for jobs and hearing nothing back? 😩 It's not you it's the economy. We are in a hiring recession. In this video, I explain: - Why this hits new grads hardest. - The impact on wage negotiation. - Why it’s time to think like an entrepreneur.

If there was ever a war on Christmas, what was that war even about? It feels like we all now just accept it as a secular holiday celebrating consumerism.