Real estate
Housing inventory graph
Friday, December 28th, 2007The demand for homes is fairly fixed. It is simply the number of households which is based on demographics. In the US, the number of households slowly increases because of immigration and more people getting married and having kids than people dying and not needing a house any more. That is why the statistics [...]
The story of downpayment assistance programs (DAP)
Thursday, October 4th, 2007Here’s the scheme:
You live in random Midwestern industrial city. The housing market is terrible. Finally, you find someone who wants to buy your house but they have no money. Zippo. If they could come up with 5%, they could qualify for a loan and buy the house. Hey - why don’t you agree on [...]
Real estate: Time for a housing diet
Sunday, September 23rd, 2007Note: LONG.
Note 2: I know there are problems with the images.
Until recently, the US has been quite good about self-regulating its demand for new housing units. The number of houses and apartments that we need corresponds to the number of households in the US, a number that changes as the number of people in [...]