The Mystery of the Missing Home Buyers

This week, the New York Times launched The Upshot, combining aspects of the Washington Post’s Wonkblog with Nate Silver’s 538. Edited by Pulitzer Prize winner and former economics columnist David Leonhardt, we linked to the inaugural piece “America’s Middle Class Is No Longer the World’s Richest.”

This morning, I want to direct your attention to another nice Upshot column, this time, by Neil Irwin: `Why the Housing Market Is Still Stalling the Economy.” I like the column, which tries to explain why the housing market is still soft. It does a nice job of combining history, demographics, current sales data and charts.

Irwin focuses on two areas: Residential overbuilding during the boom and a lack of new household formation since the bust. You probably recall the massive new home construction during the boom; economist David Rosenberg has pointed out that we are still at levels of new home construction and sales that are associated with the bottoms of prior recessions.

 

Continues here

 

Source: Calculated Risk.
Source: Calculated Risk

 

 

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