I was delighted to be a guest on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast to chat with Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway about mortgage standards and how tight lending after the Great Recession spread the housing shortage nationwide.
Great hearing you on Odd Lots. Joe and Tracy do a great job. One point that I wish had come up when you all were discussing the 2007 "bubble" and all the people predicting it. Every single one of the predictions were that the bubble would pop when interest rates started rising on the ARMs. Every one of them.
I don't know if they want me publishing their e-mail addresses. They have a Discord server where you can make show suggestions. On Twitter, the hosts are:
Hm. Interesting. I'm not entirely sure what to make of the specific measure they are using. I think interest rates probably have some marginal effect, which is probably short-term. The big temporary shifts in migration around Covid seem to be important, and those also might be somewhat temporary.
Also, this could also be related to tightened underwriting, ironically. Imagine a country that is 30% renter/70% owner, perfectly correlated with incomes. Then, it switches to 40% renter/60% owner. The new renters will have higher incomes than the original renters did. Then, add some noise to those distributions, where you have some high income renters and low income owners, and I think the tightening would lead to a rise in "wealthy renters" as they are measuring. I think.
Great hearing you on Odd Lots. Joe and Tracy do a great job. One point that I wish had come up when you all were discussing the 2007 "bubble" and all the people predicting it. Every single one of the predictions were that the bubble would pop when interest rates started rising on the ARMs. Every one of them.
Yes.
Maybe they’ll have me back on sometime to cover more of the story!
If you have their emails, I will write them!
I don't know if they want me publishing their e-mail addresses. They have a Discord server where you can make show suggestions. On Twitter, the hosts are:
@tracyalloway and @TheStalwart
On Bluesky, they are:
@tracyalloway.bsky.social and @weisenthal.bsky.social
Great episode. What do you think of the data that shows more wealthy people are renting? Is it just interest rates or something more?
Do you have a link to the data?
It's a Redfin report. Not big jumps but maybe significant? https://www.redfin.com/news/rich-renters-2025/
Hm. Interesting. I'm not entirely sure what to make of the specific measure they are using. I think interest rates probably have some marginal effect, which is probably short-term. The big temporary shifts in migration around Covid seem to be important, and those also might be somewhat temporary.
Also, this could also be related to tightened underwriting, ironically. Imagine a country that is 30% renter/70% owner, perfectly correlated with incomes. Then, it switches to 40% renter/60% owner. The new renters will have higher incomes than the original renters did. Then, add some noise to those distributions, where you have some high income renters and low income owners, and I think the tightening would lead to a rise in "wealthy renters" as they are measuring. I think.