I visit the most crowded island, where 1,000 live on a 0.49-acre patch
The island, which is barely half the size of a football pitch, is located on the north eastern side of Lake Victoria and it sits on the the border between Uganda and Kenya.
So when’s the housing bubble bursting?
- Thread starter Dr. Truth
- Start date
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Exurb boom: America's fastest-growing cities
Change in population, 2022 to 2023
Among cities with at least 250k residents in 2023The bar chart shows the U.S. cities with the greatest percentage changes in population from 2022 to 2023. Atlanta, Fort Worth, Texas, and Raleigh, N.C., experienced the most growth, while New Orleans, St. Louis, and Philadelphia saw the largest declines.
Most increased
Atlanta
+2.4%
Fort Worth, Texas
+2.2
Raleigh, N.C.
+1.9
Henderson, Nev.
+1.8
Charlotte, N.C.
+1.7
Most decreased
Memphis, Tenn.
-0.8
New York
-0.9
Philadelphia
-1.0
St. Louis
-1.6
New Orleans
-1.6
Data: U.S. Census; Chart: Erin Davis/Axios Visuals
Atlanta, Fort Worth and Raleigh are America's fastest-growing cities with more than 250,000 residents as of 2023, according to new U.S. Census Bureau data out today.
Why it matters: Late-pandemic shifts in where Americans live are still shaking out — with big implications for cities seeing massive growth or rapid decline.
By the numbers: Atlanta grew by 2.42% between 2022 and 2023, and now has 510,823 residents.
- Fort Worth grew by 2.23% with 978,468 residents in 2023, and Raleigh grew by 1.87%, with 482,295 residents.
The big picture: Southern cities dominate the list of the fastest-growing big metros, with Florida and Texas alone accounting for eight of the top 20.
- That reflects a continued trend of Americans flocking to areas of the country that face some of the greatest climate risks.
- "Fewer of the fastest-growing places between 2022 and 2023 were inner suburbs than in 2019 ... and more were on the far outskirts of metro areas — 30, 40 and even more than 60 miles away from the largest city's downtown," according to a Census Bureau analysis.
- That's a particularly pronounced phenomenon in the Phoenix metro area, where four exurbs made up a third of the broader area's population growth in 2023, the Bureau says.
housing prices still rising despite interest rates being high.
I know econ professor @praetor can speak on this more, but I am going to assume with inflation looking like it's coming down, we might get 1 or 2 cuts before the end of the year...
But who knows....
Unfortunately, any cuts means a rise in prices, essentially negating any interest rates cuts.
True. Let me ask you this and I’m no housing expert, but I do have experience.
You ever thought of buying something that’s not your forever home? Meaning a slight upgrade from where you at now, stay in it 2-3 years, and sell that joint to buy the home you want?
That’s the approach I did when I bought my first crib. It was my third option, but I could easily afford it and I needed some tax breaks. It was also better than staying in my apartment with thin ass walls and in an area I knew very well and was growing in NE DC.
Didn’t want it at first but my parents convinced me to buy and got damn they were 100% correct.
Just a thought and I know rates are high but atleast you building some equity.
I have. However, I have been renting a house in a good area for a good price, so I have been saving and enjoying some of the financial freedom of paying a much lower cost than I would a mortgage.
But we are looking for space. We’ve run out and I have to businesses I run from home that require the additional space.
Ideally, I wouldn’t mind the route you’re speaking of. I could buy a house here at a lower cost, but between the wife and daughter that’s a conversation that makes me bang my head on the table every time.
So I’m not sure what to do honestly. It’s very frustrating and everyone got their hands out.
From what I've seen, the earliest that a rate cut is expected is September.
Like 4D said, rate cuts aren't the solution for people trying to buy. We need more supply.
One possibility is that a major hurricane ends up driving up insurance rates making second homes/investment properties more trouble than they're worth. The problem though is that the buyer would have to be able to handle those higher rates.
How Home Purchases and Rentals Are Key to Bringing Down Inflation: Fed Vice Chair Jefferson Explains
by Wolf Richter • May 20, 2024 • 2 Comments
Fascinating: “Prices that families pay” when they buy homes “can affect their overall well-being.”
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
The housing sector – rental market and purchase market – is one of the most interest rate-sensitive sectors of the economy and “an important channel of monetary policy transmission,” Fed Vice Chair Philip Jefferson said today at the Mortgage Bankers Association conference. In plaintext, as we’ll see in a moment: The Fed is counting on its higher policy rates to do their thing to the housing market (rental and purchase), with the ultimate goal of lowering demand by households in the broad economy.It’s good for the Fed Vice Chair to spell that out because the housing industry with its incessant hype and hoopla wants everyone to believe otherwise.
The recalcitrant rents?
With its monetary policy of 5.25% to 5.5% rates and $1.6 trillion in QT so far, the Fed has been trying to push down demand to remove some fuel from inflation, and that has worked to some extent. Inflation has come down a lot, but then reversed course, with the hugely important measures of housing inflation – Rent and Owner’s Equivalent of Rent – having remained stubbornly high at 5%-plus in recent months. Against all expectations. And that has turned out to be a bummer.Jefferson explained away the persistently high rent inflation by pointing at the theory of the “lag effects,” where asking rents take their goodly time before becoming actual rents (the inflation index Rent measures actual rents that current tenants pay, not asking rents which are advertised rents), a theory that we have had to listen to for about 14 months, without seeing a lot of results as rent inflation has remained persistently high.
7% mortgages slowly crimp consumer spending to bring down inflation?
“The current restrictive stance of monetary policy has weighed on the housing market” by bringing “supply and demand into better balance” – thereby ending the crazy price spike that had occurred during the pandemic – and putting “downward pressure on inflation,” Jefferson said in the speech, but it hasn’t been enough yet.
One reason why higher policy rates have not been fully transmitted into the economy is the very common 30-year fixed rate mortgage where neither the mortgage rate nor the payments change for the life of the mortgage. “It is often argued that this loan structure dampens the effect of monetary policy,” Jefferson said.
While the average current 30-year fixed-rate mortgage interest rate is at around 7%, the average rate on all mortgages outstanding is below 4% as households refinanced into lower mortgage rates during the pandemic, and are now slow to sell or refinance the home to get a more expensive mortgage.
There is a delay between when mortgage rates rise in response to higher policy rates, and when the total amount in mortgage payments in aggregate rises as more mortgages with 7% rates make it into the averages.
So “households in the U.S. borrowed over $1.5 trillion in new mortgage loans in 2023. These borrowers include first-time homebuyers, existing homeowners moving between homes, and homeowners obtaining cash-out refinances,” he said.
These households that got 7% mortgages recently will be spending a much larger share of their income on mortgage payments, than households with a 3% mortgage of yore. And as those households with the 7% mortgages will have less money left over to spend on other stuff, “their consumption may be correspondingly lower,” he said.
This is the way higher policy rates work their way into demand for consumer goods and services, by forcing households with 7% mortgages to cut back on buying other consumer goods and services, which reduces consumption, and thereby demand. But it’s a slow process.
“The cumulative effect of a higher interest rate on aggregate mortgage payments grows over time as more new loans are originated at the higher rate,” Jefferson said.
Home “prices” too high?
“The housing sector is where many households have made, or will make, their largest investment. Therefore, the prices that families pay for that housing can affect their overall well-being,” Jefferson said without elaborating further.This is fascinating. The “prices that families pay” when they buy the home – not the prices they get when they sell the home – “can affect their overall well-being.” Purchase prices that are high can mess up a family’s “overall well-being?” Is it finally sinking in? After years of purposefully inflating said home prices?
The conclusion seems to confirm that: “The housing sector is also a key part of the transmission mechanism of monetary policy” – that is trying to bring inflation down. “That is one reason why policymakers will continue to pay close attention to this vital sector,” Jefferson said.
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