U.S. housing stats making buyers, sellers, builders unhappy. But there are silver linings.
PhD economists … they’re just like us, casually re-reading Tolstoy and making extremely granular housing charts!
But seriously, Realtor.com’s Jake Krimmel — a Wharton PhD and former senior economist in the Division of Research and Statistics at the Federal Reserve Board — has been doing just that, and he’s got a good report to spend some time with this week.
In it, his data visualizations and easy-to-understand language explains why homebuyers, sellers, builders, and folks in certain U.S. regions are all unhappy for different reasons — and also offers some silver linings for each scenario.
The Tolstoy reference is because he kicks off the piece by saying “it’s the Anna Karenina housing market.”
Nerd alert, LOL!
Along with War and Peace, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina is considered to be one of the world’s great novels, and the book’s opening line is:
“All happy families are like one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
So yes … a very nerdy Russian literature reference.
But also spot on for the tough-but-not-without-silver-lining housing market Jake is describing. Good stuff.
U.S. homebuyers struggle with affordability, sellers delist, builders pull back, regions diverge. But this is stagnation, not crisis. These charts explain.
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