What is the Erdmann Housing Tracker?

Here, I want to give a brief outline of how I think about the newsletter, and the difference between paid and free posts. I tend to post about 12-16 posts per month.

Below, there is a poll which you can answer if you would be likely to upgrade to a paid membership at a lower price.

Free Posts:

All posts are free unless I have a specific reason to paywall them. This includes most policy-related posts or posts related to things I have written for the Mercatus Center, etc.

Paid Post:

Generally, I consider these to be posts that can help inform asset allocation and economic decisions. I have a unique way of analyzing the housing market that can add a facet to your way of thinking about investments, the business cycle, and current economic trends.

There are probably an average of about 5 paid posts per month, though recently there have been more as economic conditions that relate to my model have triggered some additional recent posts. Each month, I post reactions to updates of housing construction and new home sales data. Usually some comments on inflation and sometimes on labor reports. Housing is an important issue to understand under current conditions when it comes to inflation and monetary policy. There are usually one or two other news items that my housing model can help to think through.

I usually have one or a few specific investments that I have strong opinions about, and I write about why I like those investments. And I offer frequent comments about trends and expectations in the new home construction sector.

My paid posts will give you some investment ideas and will definitely offer you a new perspective to consider on your investment decisions, in general.

Finally, the basic motivating feature that serves as the model for my analysis is the Erdmann Housing Tracker. It uses Zillow price estimates and IRS income estimates to disaggregate home prices into 3 components: Supply, Cyclical, and Credit. I update the national numbers for that model each month. When prices are above or below normal, my model can confirm whether there is cyclical price inflation which should reverse, whether prices are high or low due to credit conditions, or whether prices are high because of supply constraints, which would be reversed with more building.

Founding Members:

In addition to the monthly national tracker numbers, Founding members receive a spreadsheet which breaks down those components for 30 metropolitan areas. You can pick any of those metropolitan areas and any income level, and the spreadsheet will estimate the 3 components of the tracker for the average ZIP code with that income in that metropolitan area for any month between 2002 and today.

I am currently working on expanding the model to cover more metropolitan areas and to include a couple control variables. It’s a work in progress.

Poll

Here’s the poll. This will help me to see if I can allow more subscribers to see the paid posts without significantly lowering my total subscription income.