Kevin Erdmann+

Inferior housing is the most important housing.

Reader Zachary Mitchell had some interesting reactions to my recent set of posts on filtering, affordability, supply, and the 2008 crisis (1, 2, 3, 4).

Even More on Filtering and 2008

In the previous post, I continued using some of Strong Towns’ Charles Marohn’s recent comments on filtering and 2008 as the template to discuss the ways in which the conventional approach to the financial crisis and housing runs into problems.

More on Filtering and 2008

I recently wrote 2 posts (“Filtering is not a housing affordability strategy” and “Filtering is affordability is filtering”, about a post from Charles Marohn at Strong Towns where he expressed skepticism about the ability of filtering to create affordable housing.

Follow-Up to Mortgage Rates and Housing

The last post discussed some observations about interest rates, housing, and the business cycle.

Mortgage Rates and Housing

I’ll probably be revisiting this monthly, at least for a little while.

Filtering is affordability is filtering

In the previous post, I used a recent post from Charles Marohn at Strong Towns as a framework to discuss errors in the canon about 21st century housing markets.

Filtering is not a housing affordability strategy

Michael Wiebe

Employment trends and the business cycle

Well, I guess I timed my change of sentiment on interest rates well.

August 2026 New Residential Sales

This month’s sales trends seem to confirm the optimistic read on last week’s construction update.

Biases in Census housing measures

As we enter an interesting period in housing and business cycle trends, it is probably time to revisit one of the funny charts.

More Thoughts on Housing and the Business Cycle

Since I last wrote about the business cycle, the Federal Reserve chose to raise their target interest rate, and as I have been mulling where we are, I have slightly updated my expectations.

August 2026 Residential Construction

I continue to stand by my general point of view on the current market, though there is so much noise swirling around with tariffs, interest rate volatility, immigrant labor issues, domestic migration volatility, etc., that it is especially hard to make any reading of month-to-month reported numbers.

August 2026 Erdmann Housing Tracker

I wish there was more to talk about in the national numbers.

Future Housing Demand

One of the ways to minimize the housing shortage crisis is to point to changing demographics and note that, in a low-immigration scenario, population might stop growing.

Quick review of 27 years of housing

This post contains some background for the introductory paragraphs from an earlier post about the federal debt.

Rent Inflation and the Shortage

One way to see the signals of the housing shortage in commonly cited public data is to compare the CPI estimate of rent inflation to owners-equivalent rent inflation.

Speculation on the business cycle

I figure maybe there is some value in laying out in broad terms what I expect to see in near-term macroeconomic trends.

Where to Invest in the Coming Building Boom

Jay Parsons has a great post about how the apartment market is developing.

Hovnanian 3Q 2026 Details

I reviewed the earnings report last week.

The Intuition Chart

I consider this chart to be a handy guide for the weird intuition people have to always be wrong about housing trends.

Inflation, Housing, and Tariffs

I have written before about how rent inflation has been biasing monetary policy to be too tight for the past 30 years.

July 2026 Erdmann Housing Tracker Update

The new Fannie Mae/Pulsenomics Home Price Expectations Survey is out.

July 2026 Residential Home Sales

Another sideways month.

Hovnanian 3Q 2026 Earnings

I wasn’t sure what to expect this quarter.

Pew: “Mortgage Lending Standards Are Too Tight”

Adam Staveski and the housing team at Pew have a great new piece out about the post-2008 tightening of mortgage access.

Anecdotal Description of Supply Constrained Homebuilders

This is a sort of follow up to my posts that interpret the evolving monthly residential construction data, to give a little bit of background to my comments, in case some of you find it hard to follow my intuitions on the current market.

July 2026 Residential Construction

There still isn’t much to talk about.

The federal debt problem is a consequence of the mortgage moral panic.

Our housing crisis is the result of one issue, and only one issue.

Urban Institute looks at young adults at home.

The Urban Institute has a helpful look under the hood at young adults between 25 and 34 living at home.

Dream Finders buys Beazer

For the past few months, Dream Finders Homes has been privately and publicly making offers for Beazer Homes.

No, homes aren't more expensive because they are larger than they used to be.

As with yesterday’s post, this is another point which I have made before, but I think maybe I have some fresh visuals that can help settle the case.

Mismeasuring the Affordability Problem

I occasionally get my ire up about someone posting a chart of mortgage affordability, where they will usually use market mortgage rates, median household income and some estimate of the typical home price over time, and they will claim that there isn’t even an affordability problem.

In our odd era, yes, supply is what matters.

Charles Marohn at Strong Towns wrote a post the other day throwing cold water on the idea that Austin’s recent rent reductions are a sure sign of a housing supply success story.

Another estimate of the housing shortage

Ryan Moultan posted an interesting chart at BlueSky of housing inventory.

June 2026 Residential Home Sales

The long boring recovery continues.

June 2026 Erdmann Housing Tracker Update

More sideways markets.

Homeowners-to-Population Ratio (HPOP)

The Minneapolis Fed has introduced a useful new metric for tracking homeownership.

June 2026 Residential Construction

The long boring recovery continues.

Housing Cost Trends: 4 cities

I am seeing recent stories about a hot housing market in San Francisco, generally in the form of reports like especially expensive homes selling for far above asking.

Cyclical Construction and Gluts

There are at least two ways to compare housing supply over time.

The Keynes and Hayek Rap Battle, in Hindsight

If you are any kind of econ nerd, you are probably familiar with Russ Roberts’ widely viewed “Fear the Boom and Bust: Keynes vs.

Home affordability math isn't mathing

A popular trope among housing analysts is to perform a sort of DuPont Analysis for housing.

A brief review and forecast of supply-denialism

Supply-crisis deniers, and even some housing advocates, make a number of claims, including:

Facets of the Housing Shortage, A Series: Part 6

Approximately 97% of American land is rural.

Housing needs supply-siders, again

Aaron Brown, Michael Mendelson, & Clifford Asness have an article at the Dispatch titled, “Half of America Cannot Afford to Live, and Other Wrong Numbers”.

May 2026 New Home Sales

Reported sales dipped a bit this month.

C-Span Washington Journal

I recently appeared on C-Span’s Washington Journal to talk about housing.

May 2026 Erdmann Housing Tracker Update

with notes on inflation

21st Century Housing in Three Atlanta Suburbs

I am currently engaged in a project where we are attempting to take a deep and thorough look at the causes and effects of investors in residential real estate.

Realtor.com estimates of the housing shortage

Unless there is a scheduling change, I will be on C-Span Washington Journal Saturday morning at 8am EDT.

May 2026 Residential Construction

New numbers are out for May construction from the Census Bureau.

Facets of the Housing Crisis, A Series: Part 5

Talking past each other

Facets of the Housing Crisis, A Series: Part 4

Back of the envelope notes on scale

Facets of the Housing Crisis

Housing has several distinct problems with different causes and solutions.

Dream Finders & Beazer Homes

Dream Finders announced a bid to buy Beazer Homes.

March 2026 New Home Sales

Recently, I have been writing about the difference between the 20th century, demand constrained housing market and the 21st century supply constrained housing market.

Podcast Interview with Peter Yoder

I had a great and thorough conversation with Peter Yoder covering many issues in housing.

Mortgages and the Supply of Safe Assets

I recently wrote about how the mortgage crackdown at the federal agencies in 2008 was, arguably, the overwhelming source of the sudden drop in spending in 2008 that was associated with collapsing nominal GDP growth, the deepening recession, and the financial crisis.

20th Century vs. 21st Century Housing, Part 3

How will homebuilding markets work under shortage conditions?

20th Century vs. 21st Century Housing, Part 2

How we got here.

March 2026 Residential Construction

Long boring recovery.

20th Century vs. 21st Century Housing, Part 1

What caused the change?

March 2026 Erdmann Housing Tracker Update

This month, noise in short-term inflation trends from Trump chaos continues to put analysis in a wait-and-see mode.

Revisiting Aggregate Demand in 2008

In yesterday’s post, I discussed the various pathologies and blind spots that defined reactions to the 2008 financial crisis.

Another Nevada Hallucination

Matt Darling recently alerted me to something that had somehow escaped my attention.

A Reality Check on Relative Home Prices

Most of my technical analysis is derived from a fundamental observation: Where a vertical supply curve creates a shortage of adequate housing, it leads to asymmetrical rent and price appreciation. The most expensive homes are relatively unaffected, and the inflationary effect of the shortage is proportional to the socio-economic distance between any given home and the most expensive homes in the metropolitan area. That pattern defined the expensive coastal metropolises before 2008 and now shows up across most cities, to some extent. Where prices are elevated for other reasons, like cyclical fl

The housing crisis is making young Americans poorer.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal reflects a number of common statistical and rhetorical claims regarding home affordability that I think are misleading or call for some rethinking, and I thought it might be worthwhile to review them.

Apartments in the Midwest

Figure 1 compares single-family (dashed) and multi-family (solid) completions per capita in the Midwest (blue) and the Northeast (red).

No, builders don't pull back until rents inflate, Part 2

I forgot to make an additional point in yesterday’s post.

No, builders don't pull back until rents inflate

20th Century real estate markets were all about location, location, location.

Hovnanian 1Q 2026 Details

Some mixed signals in this quarter’s 10-Q filing.

More on the supply of rental homes

In the mid-20th century, in a typical year, the US added a bit more than 1.5 million new homes.

It's hard to measure the cost of the housing shortage.

Just as I was re-sharing the link to my latest paper for the Mercatus Center, an article appeared at the Los Angeles Times that can serve as a great jumping off point for the main issue it covers.