The fed only stopped buying MBS a month ago.
(Also, they hold like $2T+ of them on their balance sheet. Im sure the 'experts' over at the fed will say this has no effect on the current market)
How can there be any doubt that this production glut has played a huge role in the rise of housing prices?
The population was growing around 1.1% a year in the 70s; it was 0.75% the last decade and is currently between 0.1% and 0.25% [1].
[1] https://united-states.reaproject.org/analysis/comparative-in...
You also need to consider the fact that household sizes are trending downwards pretty consistently, so there needs to be more houses for the same number of people.
I know Houston supposedly got a HUGE influx of people leaving NYC and SV in 2020-2021, but still, my home town of around 20k people just got 2 brand new neighborhoods in 2021 with 500 homes between them all selling for $300k+ when you used to be able to buy a house in town for $50-100k. Even with record breaking housing development, the cost of homes in the last few years in Houston has been ridiculous.
That's easily refuted with a quick search.
Decreased supply along with increasing population(demand) generally yields a shortage and increased prices.
Housing units per household is at year 2000 levels and in line with history.
Check the data, it's all on FRED
What you're repeating is common conversational talking points spread as fact.
It is true that building slowed in the 2010s, but housing was overbuilt in the 2000s too which neutralizes that. Also number of housing units under construction is at an all time high right now, while population growth is the slowest ever (including immigration) and decelerating.
Look to the Japanese property sector for the future of US pricing. Demographic story is a long one that will take decades to play out though. Immigration policy could change things
https://www.google.com/search?q=japanese+population+growth+r...
What do you think happens to housing units per capita as population levels decline?
The US and China are on the same path, just some years behind. We can ignore demographics for the next handful of years, but it will become very impactful on a 10+ year time horizon. China will deal with the inverted population pyramid sooner than us, so it will be interesting to see if that affects their GDP surpassing the US.
Anyway, the property sector will be super interesting in 50 years, when everything is overbuilt relative to population size. I imagine eventually rents will naturally become deflationary
so what did the seller of those property spend their profits on?
Yeah but unoccupied units is only a few % in the hottest housing markets. This makes sense, considering that the opportunity cost of leaving a home empty is higher if the rent is higher. Because of this I'm inclined to believe it's popular-but-ineffective intervention, like banning foreign buyers (which also make up a few % of overall sales)
If we want low-cost housing, the government can provide that. Instead, we rely on a market that is designed to optimized for highest cost the market can bare.
99% of homes are not vacant. The vacancy rate of housing is not significantly different from the past, in fact its actually lower than it was a few years ago. While I don't really mind the idea of taxing long-vacant properties to encourage use and discourage pure speculation, I don't think it'll make that much of a different in residential property valuations.
This can be very roughly approximated by a 10-year moving average on the product of (housing prices x mortgage rates). CPI shelter inflation is currently ticking up each month like clockwork, at 5% and climbing, and it has a long way still to go to catch up with that trend.