Recent Posts by Mark Fleming

Mark Fleming is the chief economist for First American Financial Corporation and leads First American’s Decision Sciences team.

Buy, Buy Millennials!

By Mark Fleming on November 7, 2016
A common narrative over the last several years is that Millennials are breaking with the habits of their parents when it comes to home buying. Millennials rent longer, live with their parents, and are burdened with student loan debt. In short, it would seem that for a variety of reasons they aren’t as interested in homeownership as their ... Read More

Housing Millennials Real House Price Index

Housing Starts – Just Keeping Up with the Millennials

By Mark Fleming on October 28, 2016
Given the most recent release on housing starts showing a decline, many are asking if the housing market is stagnating. Builders fear that the decades of broad-based demand for single-family suburban homes is now a bygone era. Young millennials are pouring into the big city and eschewing homeownership permanently. Who, if anyone, will want to buy ... Read More

Millennials

Crowd-Sourced Title Agent Projections More Accurate than Many Economic Forecasts

By Mark Fleming on October 21, 2016
It has been a full year since our proprietary Real Estate Sentiment Index (RESI) first shared title agents’ predictions for price growth and other key metrics across property types for the year ahead. So, with a full year of data, the time is right to ask the question: how accurate is the wisdom of the crowd? In a post late last year, we discussed ... Read More

Housing Real Estate Sentiment Index Affordability

Market is Missing Its Potential Due to Tight Supply

By Mark Fleming on October 18, 2016
First American has updated its proprietary Potential Home Sales model for the month of September. Read More

Housing Interest Rates

Automation Angst – The Polarization of the Labor Market in the 21st Century

By Mark Fleming on October 11, 2016
Success achieving the American Dream of homeownership is, in large part, dependent on the ability to earn a good income. For much of the last century, a job in manufacturing provided a stable and solid income. In fact, after World War II, the United States was the manufacturer to the world, as America’s post-war economic boom changed the way we ... Read More

Education Income

Market Potential Improves on the Back of Gains in Income

By Mark Fleming on September 20, 2016
For the month of August, First American’s proprietary Potential Home Sales model showed that the market for existing-home sales is underperforming its potential by 5.6 percent or an estimated 323,000 seasonally adjusted, annualized rate (SAAR) of sales, an improvement relative to last month’s revised performance gap of -5.7 percent or 328,000 ... Read More

Housing