Housing market improving as underperformance gap between existing-home sales and market capacity shrinks. First American’s proprietary Existing-Home Sales Capacity (EHS-C) model provides a gauge on whether existing-homes sales are under capacity or over capacity based on current market fundamentals. For the month of June, the EHS-C rate decreased ... Read More ›

Over the weekend, Greece signed up for an agreement with the European Union that saved it from a “Grexit” (Greek exit from the Eurozone). In other news, the Chinese stock market has finally stabilized almost a third off its early June peak. Yet this wasn’t necessarily the result of the market alone, but significant intervention on the part of the ... Read More ›

We have published several blog posts recently on the impact of education on income. It should be common knowledge that higher levels of education correspond with higher incomes. But how do income brackets break down across education levels? Or asked differently, how badly do you need a bachelor’s degree if you want to make six figures? Read More ›

This month in Mortgage Banking Magazine, I have an article entitled “Equity For All” in which I discuss the importance of homeownership for economic mobility and growth. This is particularly important today as the homeownership rate is at 25 year lows and some are suggesting that it may even fall further (see the recent research from Urban ... Read More ›

In a previous blog post, we explored the relationship between the age of the US Hispanic population and its homeownership rate; now, let’s examine a second factor: income. As shown in the first figure, higher income clearly correlates with higher rates of homeownership. Just like our measure of age and homeownership in the last post, the biggest ... Read More ›

Hispanics are the most rapidly growing ethnic group in the United States, more than doubling in number over the past 20 years. This demographic that accounts for a fifth of the millennial population will play an ever-increasing and important role in the housing market, upcoming elections, and the future of the country as a whole. However, ... Read More ›