This Is How the U.S. Ran Out of Homes for Sale
Odd Lots
Bloomberg
4.5 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 7 June 2021
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Home demand is booming. By some measures, the market is even hotter than it was during the peak prior to the financial crisis. But there's one big problem: There just aren't many homes available to buy. Whether it's existing inventory or new home sales, there simply isn't enough to meet the demand, even with prices surging. On this episode of Odd Lots, we speak with housing economist Ali Wolf, the chief economist at the data and research firm Zonda, about how the boom happened; how America became so under-housed; and how constraints of land, labor and materials are making it brutal to build more of them.
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Transcript
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| 0:54.3 | Hello and welcome to another episode of the Adlots podcast. I'm Joe Wyzontal. |
| 1:00.3 | And I'm Tracy Alloway. |
| 1:02.0 | So Tracy, it's been a long time since I visited you in Hong Kong, but one thing I remember, |
| 1:08.8 | I know it's too long, and as soon as I can, whether like after the virus or whatever, |
| 1:12.9 | I got to make that happen. Yeah, I totally agree. I just, I'm thinking like I haven't left |
| 1:18.8 | this relatively small area for a year and a half now. And I am, |
| 1:23.6 | you're getting stir crazy. Yeah. But one thing that I remember like about Hong Kong is like, |
| 1:28.4 | people there like are just obsessed with like real estate, right? Like I just remember it just sort |
| 1:33.2 | of like real estate buying, home buying, speculation. It just seemed to be in the air in Hong Kong. |
| 1:39.3 | Absolutely. It's sort of almost a way of life here. I guess it's the thing everyone aspires to |
| 1:45.2 | is eventually owning a house. House prices are absolutely insane. There's a perpetual shortage of |
| 1:51.2 | housing, although there's a big debate about whether that's in fact true or whether it's because of |
| 1:57.4 | ill-considered government policy and things like that. But yes, if you walk down the street, |
| 2:02.9 | almost every other building probably has some sort of real estate office in it, |
| 2:08.9 | and everyone just loves to talk about home buying, home prices, speculation. |
| 2:14.9 | So I think in the US, it more like goes in waves. Like obviously 2005, 2006, that was crazy, |
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