Affordability is arguably the single biggest factor driving the housing market.

And by some measures, it's improving.

The median rent is now as affordable as it was before the pandemic.

But that positive trend comes with some concerns to investors.

Like is rent growth going to stay low?

Will we see a rebound in rents in multifamily?

What about single family?

These are complex questions, but they are key to formulating a good investing thesis in 2025 and beyond.

So today, we're breaking it down.

Welcome back to On the Market. I'm Dave Meyer. And today we're talking about rental affordability, plus a few other topics. And joining us to help is Lou Chen, senior economist at Moody's.

Lou has more than a decade of experience studying the commercial real estate sector and is great at helping us understand how that commercial activity can actually spill into the residential market as well.

In today's show, we'll talk about rent affordability and also break down some surprising regional supply trends and the shifting demographics that could drive

market changes, market dynamics, and returned during the next few years.

This conversation was a lot of fun.

Lou even brought a housing data quiz to try and stunt me.

So let's get into it and you can see how I did.

Lou, welcome back to On the Market.

Thanks for being here. Thank you for having me, Dave. I am eager to jump right in because I've been

following some of your work. And when I saw the headline recently, I was a little surprised to see it

that you're saying that affordability is nearing pre-pandemic

levels. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, it's all because of the supply and demand, Dave.

So there has been significant of supply coming online since the beginning of 2024, and we're

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