Welcome to 10 blocks. I'm Jordan McGillis, economics editor of City Journal. In 2024, with average mortgage rates

hovering around 7%, and the average home price rising to over $400,000, U.S. home sales fell to the

lowest level, around $4 million, since 1995. And that's despite the national population having risen by 70 million people in that time.

To discuss the housing market, I'm joined today by Judge Glock. Judge is the Manhattan Institute's

director of research, and he's the author of The Dead Pledge, a 2021 book published by Columbia

University Press on the origins of the mortgage market. Judge, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for having me, Jordan. So what do you make of these numbers? Do you buy into the

argument that homeownership is increasingly out of reach? And if so, is that meaningful?

Well, it's not necessarily out of reach in that if you look at the national homeownership rate,

it's around 66%.

So two-thirds of households in America own their own homes.

And that's not too far from the historical average.

We had a bump up to almost 70% during the housing boom.

But this 66% is pretty normal.

Now, that...

Pause for a second.

When you say boom, the boom pre-housing bubble burst in 2008?

Yes.

And we can get into that, how much of that was a bubble?

Because one of my long-term cases, our arguments has been that it was not a bubble.

And I think the increase in housing prices since 2006, actually, has shown that that was, if anything,

just a forerunner of what we've seen in recent years, which is a continual increase in

...