We Are Building Houses As Financial Assets

A weekend topic starting with WATE. “While home prices have risen this year, the East Tennessee Realtors Association said the housing market is going in a good direction, with more homes coming on the market. Maria McHale, government affairs and policy director for the East Tennessee Realtors said that while there are a number of homes to choose from, they are still out of reach for many people. East Tennessee’s average median home sale price is currently around $375,000, and Knox County’s is over $400,000. ‘For reference, in 2020 in April, we were looking at about $216,000, so you can see how steep that is,’ said McHale. She added that housing inventory is the largest factor in bringing down sale prices.”

The Idaho Press. “Senators, representatives and experts met at the Capitol on Wednesday to discuss the state of Idaho’s housing. Max Pond, head of government affairs for the Idaho Association of Realtors, spoke to the committee about Idaho’s housing inventory. The cost for an average starter home, defined as being in the 25th percentile of housing costs, was $420,000 in 2024. To afford a starter home, a household would need an income of over $100,000. ‘Many families’ wages have not grown at the same rate as housing in Idaho,’ Pond said. Star Mayor Trevor Chadwick has taken the ongoing challenge of accommodating new housing while meeting the needs of current residents. Chadwick said the cost of land has skyrocketed. According to him, land that used to cost between $25,000 and $50,000 per acre now costs $350,000 per acre.”

WVIR in Virginia. “If you have been more frustrated than usual by Charlottesville traffic, you are probably not alone. As the cost of housing in the Charlottesville-Albemarle area raises and fewer homes go on the market, more people have moved to surrounding Fluvanna and Greene Counties, according to the Charlottesville Area Association of Realtors, or CAAR. ‘People have this drive-to-save or drive-til-you-buy idea and so that’s exactly what happens,’ CAAR President Josh White said. ‘You know, you get pushed out of the city center to more of the rural markets or the markets where the prices haven’t quite escalated as high.'”

From Reuters. “Single-family housing starts, which account for the bulk of homebuilding, dropped 2.1% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 927,000 units last month, the Commerce Department’s Census Bureau said on Friday. A National Association of Home Builders survey on Thursday showed sentiment among single-family homebuilders plunged to a 1-1/2-year low in May, with 78% of builders reporting ‘difficulties pricing their homes recently due to uncertainty around material prices.’ There is also a glut of unsold new homes, with inventory at levels last seen in late 2007.”

From KHON. “Buying and renting homes in Hawaii continues to be a challenge for most residents, according to the latest Housing Factbook released by the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization (UHERO). While condominium prices have dipped slightly, experts warn that the overall outlook remains troubling. ‘The pullback of insurers unwilling to provide insurance to condos means a lot of people can’t qualify for a mortgage, which has zapped some demand and is partially why prices have gone down,’ said UHERO economist Justin Tyndall.”

From Fox 13. “As Florida’s homeowners dispute insurance denials from last year’s hurricanes, state reforms intended to improve service and bring down our bills are coming under scrutiny. However, homeowners reported their premiums continued to rise through 2023. For example, in Pinellas County, Dave Lesko’s home insurance bill increased from $5,500 to $7,500 in 2023, after he had renovated and bolstered it with stronger windows. Then in 2024, his bill rose to $17,000. ‘I thought so at first I read the number wrong. I had to get my glasses and double-check, but it’s correct and it’s actually a 120% increase from last year,’ Lesko said.”

Fox 7 Austin. “If you’re looking to buy or sell a home in Central Texas, you’ll likely be navigating an unpredictable real estate market. When Liz Del Bosque put her northeast Austin home on the market back in March, she saw pretty strong interest, including packed open houses and a lot of showings. In the last few weeks, it’s been somewhat slower as more and more houses have gone up for sale in the Austin area. Del Bosque’s realtor Olivia Vale with Roots Residential Group says that’s not exactly the picture most experts had anticipated. ‘It’s a pretty competitive time that way because smaller pool of buyers, there is quite a lot of inventory for them to choose from right now,’ said Vale. While the market is a little sticky for sellers, there are some things you can do to overcome it, says Vale. ‘You can either… Have your sale be a smashing success by doing everything your realtor says, by prepping your home immaculately and just having it so ready to go that you’ll attract those buyers. If not, it’s gonna be really hard for you to stand out,’ said Vale.”

KEYT in California. “That college degree earned a few years ago and the thought of making around $100,000 a year someday soon may not be enough in Santa Barbara County. A new report says a single person making $98,850 in Santa Barbara County is still considered low income. In the Bay area – Marin, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and San Francisco counties that figure is $100,000. A single person making six-figures could be above the median income of the area, but because of the lofty prices for housing, they fall into a low income range. Checking on several sites including Zillow, the average price of a home is around $1.8 million in Santa Barbara and about $650 thousand in Santa Maria.”

“Cristian Arambula said, ‘Yes. Two jobs and like five side quest and, some overtime. Yeah. Everyone’s kind of doing what they can. The side hustle is real. Yeah, absolutely. Uber, Lyft, DoorDash. You can do some production stuff. I work with livestock. I do massage now. I just came from a modeling gig.’ The economics of living in these times have many residents stretching out their working years. ‘I do, and I see more people who are retired who are not really retiring. They’re working past retirement. They’re getting both their benefits, and then they go out and get a side gig,’ said Jay McGrath in downtown.”

CTV News in Canada. “According to a new report, housing affordability in Fredericton, N.B. has worsened at a dramatic pace as the median home sale price jumped 85 per cent in five years. Aspiring homebuyers in the city, like Grace Colter, didn’t have to read the report to understand the issue. She’s been living it. The 25-year-old has moved back with her parents to save. ‘I feel like I should be in a different spot right now with my housing,’ she said. Lalith Kuragodage, 38, bought his house two years ago but not before paying $40,000 over-asking. He said his house, which was valued at $200,000 about three years ago, would now sell for about $340,000 and thinks housing prices in New Brunswick are now too high. ‘It’s not affordable actually,’ he said. From 2019 to 2024, the median home sale price in Fredericton jumped from $210,000 to nearly $388,000.”

Globe and Mail in Canada. “Unlike repeat homebuyers and investors, first-time homebuyers rely primarily on their incomes to fund both the down payment and monthly mortgage payments. As such, one of the most relevant indicators of affordability for them is the home price-to-disposable income ratio. The data reveal a stark divide in the Canadian housing market. On one side are most regions in Southern Ontario and British Columbia, where home prices significantly outpace incomes, pushing the ratio well above 8 – a threshold that signals unaffordability. At the extreme end of the spectrum is Vancouver, with a staggering price-to-income ratio of 14.4, making it not only the least affordable city in Canada but also the most unaffordable large metropolitan area in North America.”

The Canadian Dimension. “Housing costs are high because there are not enough homes. We must do everything in our power to add as many residences to the nation’s stockpile as quickly as possible. In the words of newly elected Prime Minister Mark Carney, the best solution to the housing crisis is to ‘build big, build bold and build now.’ Common sense says the core of this crisis is a basic supply and demand equation. But is common sense right? A 2025 CMHC report shows that Edmonton and Calgary have had similar vacancy rates for the last three years, but despite their comparable supply restrictions Calgary’s housing values rose by 17 percent while Edmonton’s rose by just five percent. Put another way, Calgary’s housing prices are rising three times faster than Edmonton’s—a difference that amounts to tens of thousands of dollars in the average homeowner’s property value. How can housing markets in similar cities be subject to virtually the same supply and demand pressures and have such divergent price fluctuations?”

“Some countries, like Portugal, have substantially more surplus housing than Canada but struggle with even higher housing costs. Other countries, like the Netherlands, have greater housing scarcity than we do, but have been able to keep their prices under Canadian averages. When the data is visualized there is no obvious correlation between relative housing abundance and average home prices. It is clear that supply and demand curves are not sufficient for understanding the housing crisis. We can build all we want, but if we are building houses as financial assets and not as places for people to live prices are going to stay high. We saw this in the 2010s when huge booms in the construction of luxury condos in San Francisco and London resulted in lots of empty penthouses but did nothing to address affordability.”

“By monomaniacally fixating on increasing supply we lose sight of the complexity of the issue. Our attempts to restore affordability under the banner ‘build big, build bold and build now’ (which has effectively been federal government policy since 2017) have only made things worse.”

Broker Daily in Australia. “The build-to-rent (BTR) initiative is set to allow for the development of large-scale, purpose-built rental housing units to be held in single ownership. In 2023, the Labor government allocated $60 million to support build-to-rent trials across the NSW South Coast and Northern Rivers regions. While this initiative has been welcomed by property industry professionals, Home Loan Experts senior mortgage broker Jonathan Preston is unconvinced of the scheme’s efficacy as a solution for affordability and supply, labelling BTR as ‘a joke.’ ‘I believe the solution is to allow for the construction of smaller apartments. ‘In Asia, units of 27-30sqm are standard for 1-bedrooms. They make 1000-2000 units per building,’ Preston said. ‘All of this ‘build-to-rent’ is a joke. We could solve housing affordability in a day if we just cut out the last 10 years of regulations: unlimited height ratios, no minimum sqm internals. Turn it into cage housing like Hong Kong. It’s the regulation that’s the issue.”

Radio New Zealand. “Twice this week, first-home buyers have been told that now might be their big chance to get into the housing market. But just how great an opportunity is it, really? Nationally, house prices are still down about 15 percent from the peak, although they are still up 4 percent a year compared to five years ago. Wellington’s prices are furthest from the peak, still down more than 25 percent, Auckland’s are down 21.6 percent. But all prices are still higher than five years ago. ‘Houses are more affordable than they were,’ Corelogic chief property economist Kelvin Davidson said. ‘I still wouldn’t say they are affordable as such – they’re cheaper, but not necessarily cheap. But are house prices really going to fall significantly further from here? It seems unlikely. They’ll probably turn around and rise a bit. There’s a sense now that they’re as cheap as they’re going to be even if they’re not necessarily cheap.'”

“But it’s actually a good time to be a renter, too. There is also a lot of rental stock on the market in lots of parts of the country, and advertised rents are dropping. The picture isn’t consistent across the entire country but it’s taking longer than normal to rent in most places with the exception of parts of Canterbury and Hawke’s Bay. ‘You could make a case of why rush into it when you could get a good deal on a rental for a while and you’re probably not going to get left behind by the housing market in the meantime,’ Davidson said. ‘In general terms renting is always cheaper than buying so nothing has really changed there… if you stuck to that line of argument no one would ever buy a house.'”