First American Chief Economist Mark Fleming was interviewed on CNBC and Yahoo! Finance last week, discussing the 2020 outlook for the housing market and how persistently low mortgage rates may both help and hurt home buyers in the year ahead.

In 2019, the growth in consumer house-buying power outpaced house price appreciation for the median renter trying to buy the median priced home. But, there are many renters with household incomes below the median income in their cities. We can measure affordability for all renter households based on their household income and the share of homes...

Housing affordability, or the lack thereof, continued to generate discussion and headlines in 2019. That’s unlikely to change in 2020, as strong demand, driven by low mortgage rates and wage growth, collides with limited housing supply. However, it’s easy to overlook that nearly two-thirds of Americans already own homes so, generally speaking,...

Thus far in 2019, the story of the housing market has been a tale of strong housing demand and limited supply. On the demand side, steadily rising house-buying power has fueled greater demand. Falling mortgage rates and rising household income sparked a nearly 12.6 percent increase in house-buying power year to date through September. The...

First American Deputy Chief Economist Odeta Kushi was interviewed on Nightly Business Report last week and discussed the dramatic jump in housing starts to a 12-year high, signaling the potential for some housing supply relief in the near future.

Traditional measures of affordability can be misleading to potential first-time home buyers because they compare overall median household income with the income required to purchase a median-priced home. However, median household income includes existing homeowner households, which have significantly higher median income than renter households,...