In this episode of the REconomy podcast from First American, Chief Economist Mark Fleming and Deputy Chief Economist Odeta Kushi discuss how long-term shifts in the U.S. labor market have been accelerated by the pandemic, and what that may mean for housing in the months and years ahead.

The housing market prior to the pandemic could have been characterized as a sellers’ market, with a shortage of supply relative to demand. With the current supply of homes for sale even tighter relative to demand, it can only be characterized as a super-sellers’ market today. The pandemic has intensified a sense of home as refuge and falling...

As the housing market has recovered from the initial impacts of the pandemic, nominal house price appreciation has soared, but affordability actually improved until recently due to the house-buying power benefit from historically low mortgage rates. However, for the second month in a row, the Real House Price Index (RHPI) increased, indicating...

Affordability declined month over month in September for the second month in a row, even as two of the three key drivers of the Real House Price Index (RHPI), household income and mortgage rates, swung in favor of increased affordability. The 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage fell by 0.05 percentage points and household income increased 0.2 percent...

First American Deputy Chief Economist Odeta Kushi was interviewed on Yahoo! Finance earlier this month, discussing why the housing market is better positioned in this recession than it was heading into the Great Recession, and how low rates and millennials are driving demand.

In this episode of the REconomy podcast from First American, Chief Economist Mark Fleming and Deputy Chief Economist Odeta Kushi break down housing affordability trends, discuss the economic forces that influence house-buying power and explain why housing is actually more affordable today, even amid the pandemic, than it was at the peak of the...