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Kevin Erdmann

@kevinerdmann.bsky.social
3.9K followers 585 following 3K posts

I discovered the surprising story of what really happened in 2008 (not enough housing) and accidentally became a housing policy guy. kevinerdmann.substack.com www.amazon.com/stores/Kevin-Erdmann…

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 16h
More discussion on affordability vs. quality of life. Affordability is inseperable from filtering. We can't make housing more affordable by insisting on only building less valuable homes. It can't happen. 1/ Filtering is affordability is filtering kevinerdmann.substack.com/p/filtering-...
kevinerdmann.substack.com
Filtering is affordability is filtering
In the previous post, I used a recent post from Charles Marohn at Strong Towns as a framework to discuss errors in the canon about 21st century housing markets.
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Of course affordable housing will be associated with downward filtering. Don't be a weirdo. Filtering is not a housing affordability strategy kevinerdmann.substack.com/p/filtering-...
kevinerdmann.substack.com
Filtering is not a housing affordability strategy
Michael Wiebe
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Google said housing in South Korea has gotten more expensive, and when I asked what they are doing about it, the answers actually generally look like things that will add more housing and make it more accessible.
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I’m against flock cameras. This is America. If the government needs information about you, they can have a gang of masked thugs bust your window out and demand answers.
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
People will say that housing is a human right and then lock the doors to their house.
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Michael Andersen @andersem.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I have a confession to make. The townhomes I & others spent most of a decade trying to legalize are popping up all over Oregon & elsewhere...and I love that...but they're a problem in one big way. (get ready for a twisty thread about the housing report @sightline.org just published)
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
We should do a targeted wealth tax. Just tax those who hold Treasuries 5% of their value each year. Easy peasy. Problems solved.
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
It seems to me that we're in the midst of a tech boom. It's the 90s again. Nobody in the 1990s was demanding lower interest rates because of affordability complaints. I'm afraid the housing shortage is going to lead to more unpredictable policy errors. fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1YVXX
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
It's so hard to create a recession when there is a housing shortage that even the most inverted yield curve since 1980 couldn't do it (though it did knock unemployment up a point).
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Mortgage rates and new home sales, 1968-2026
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The way NPR hosts loudly suck on their cheeks before asking a question has become like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. Does anyone else notice it?
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
I think it’s a symptom of our time that this happened, and so many analysts are like “omg they flooded the market with so much supply the whole industry is in chaos!” fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1YR9t
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
The lawyer for the Venezuelan man shot by ICE yesterday says he was discharged from the hospital and transferred to ICE detention while the bullet was still inside of him, and that in Pearsall he's not received any pain meds and was forced to sleep on the floor.
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Ryan Goodman @rgoodlaw.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
He is not wrong. "There are reasonable grounds to believe that the reported 68 attacks that killed 223 people constituted crimes against humanity of murder under customary international law" - United Nations Special Rapporteur on U.S. Killing “Narco-Terrorists” at Sea www.ohchr.org/sites/defaul...
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Was there anyone in 2015-2019 posting mortgage affordability charts to argue that homes were way too cheap?
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 19/09/2026
Dr Oz: "I'll give you a number you'll never forget -- if we can get the average American to be so healthy, so with it, so vital that they just want to work a little longer, it's worth a trillion dollars to the US economy"
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Philip Bump @pbump.com · 19/09/2026
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MeidasTouch @meidastouch.com · 19/09/2026
NEWS: The Pentagon has announced mandatory low-testosterone screenings for male troops 30 and older, including screening for symptoms such as “reduced libido, loss of spontaneous morning erections, erectile dysfunction,” and other symptoms.
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Seems like the weakest president in the history of the nation, when you consider that another nation has bombed several of our military bases, and the president isn't even considering whether to declare war on them.
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Jed Kolko @jedkolko.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
The 2025 American Community Survey should have come out today. But it has been delayed because of unusual political encroachment at Census. ACS drives business and policy decisions, especially in local communities, and is the primary input to Census’s immigration estimates.
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Sam @samd.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Jamelle Bouie said it best (per usual) Trump has the mentality of a domestic abuser h/t @jamellebouie.net
jamelle@@jamellebouie.net • 1d
"trump will destroy everything he cannot own in perpetuity" is one reason i am filled with dread over 2028
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Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Trump thinks that it's a hostile act against the US if other countries trade with the US, and also if other countries trade with each other without the US.
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
After 20 years of zero lower bounds, interest on reserves, quantitative easing, inverted front end/up-sloped back end, etc. it will almost be quaint if we end up just having a good old fashioned Fed induced yield curve inversion.
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Future Housing Demand kevinerdmann.substack.com/p/future-hou...
kevinerdmann.substack.com
Future Housing Demand
One of the ways to minimize the housing shortage crisis is to point to changing demographics and note that, in a low-immigration scenario, population might stop growing.
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NY Times Pitchbot @nytpitchbot.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Elon Musk is an unstable right-wing grifter with more power than any one else in the world. But my liberal neighbor has convinced my city council to put in bike lanes on the road I use to commute to work. I have never felt more politically homeless.
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
This post deserves a better publication time than late Friday afternoon, but here it is anyway. Quick review of 27 years of housing kevinerdmann.substack.com/p/quick-revi...
kevinerdmann.substack.com
Quick review of 27 years of housing
This post contains some background for the introductory paragraphs from an earlier post about the federal debt.
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Amazing
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Yonah Freemark @yonahfreemark.com · 10/09/2026
In the early 2000s, transit ridership levels in the Atlanta and Seattle urban areas were quite similar. Since then, the two regions have experienced dramatic change: While Seattle's ridership is 70% higher than back then, Atlanta's is 40% lower. www.thetransportpolitic.com/databook/us-...
Monthly transit ridership, by urban area, Atlanta and Seattle.
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pompoustakes.bsky.social @pompoustakes.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Don't miss out on the Irish housing politics experiment. Abt half the politically engaged population refer to any corporate investment in rental accommodation as a "vulture fund". In the last few years landlords have increasingly been routinely refereed to as "vultures". It's off the rails.
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Looks like the stupid train is leaving the station. At least you can note who gets on it, so you'll know the enemies of shared progress. Michigan has passed an anti-corporate housing bill. legiscan.com/MI/bill/HB60... Oregon has passed a weaker anti-corporate bill. legiscan.com/OR/sponsors/...
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Could it be that the tech boom really did unleash a surge of real GDP, and our mistake has been assuming the counterfactual was a stable trend?
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Corporate housing foes are so prejudiced, they can't imagine any value comes from a large corporation building a home and renting it, so preliminary to any evidence, they consider it exploitation. It's like refusing surgery because the doctor is black. But the racist patient only kills themselves.
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
The catch: you have to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
It's saddening that anti-corporate prejudice is so strong that people can explicitly make an argument that renters don't belong in our suburbs and think that makes them virtuous. www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/wall-st...
phoenixnewtimes.com
Wall Street destroying the American Dream in Phoenix, study says
Wall Street investors powerful hold over Phoenix’s housing market is also likely to only get worse, according to experts.
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
One way that the regressive effect of the housing shortage is visible in normal public data is that rental value of rented homes rises more than owned homes. Rent Inflation and the Shortage kevinerdmann.substack.com/p/rent-infla...
kevinerdmann.substack.com
Rent Inflation and the Shortage
One way to see the signals of the housing shortage in commonly cited public data is to compare the CPI estimate of rent inflation to owners-equivalent rent inflation.
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
We spent years carefully negotiating a North American production zone so that many firms have production networks that span Canada and Mexico. Does anyone have a good explanation for why these big tariff and ban policies aren’t creating more havoc for those firms?
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
What's the counterfactual for people that complain about outsourcing? 1) Poor countries just stay poor and never manufacture anything? 2) 2 global economies develop where Americans make and buy $40 shirts while the rest of the world buys $20 shirts? 3) ??
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...
washingtonpost.com
Did we make it too hard to get a mortgage after 2008? A new report says yes.
Some say the pendulum has swung too far since the 2008 housing crisis. Others warn that looser standards for who qualifies for a mortgage once led to disaster.
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
They feared it could delay the trial... I don't know how to process any of this. The Mad Hatter wrote this article. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/04/u...
nytimes.com
Prosecutors Won’t Try to Reinstate Key 9/11 Confession Taken After Torture
The military’s lawyers said they feared an appeal could delay the trial of the man accused of masterminding the attacks, which is scheduled to start in mid-2028.
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
What's going on here? It looks like Dallas housing has become especially seasonal, but that the Case-Shiller seasonal controls have started overstating seasonality at the same time and over-correcting.
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Oof
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
can we take as given that the White House ballroom will be structurally sound?
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Jay Parsons has a great new post about trends in rents, which points to exactly the trends my model of the housing market would point to. More consumption at the top. Lower rents at the bottom. Get used to it. (And, for Pete's sake, don't block it.) kevinerdmann.substack.com/p/where-to-i...
kevinerdmann.substack.com
Where to Invest in the Coming Building Boom
Jay Parsons has a great post about how the apartment market is developing.
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Scott Lincicome @scottlincicome.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
FREEDOM FUEL: "Domestic Energy Shipments Are Breaking Records Under the Jones Act Waiver" via @CatoInstitute @cpgrabow www.cato.org/blog/shippin...
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
We like hello fresh, but in the last 3 months, we might have received the correct instruction cards for all the meals like 2-3 times.
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
This post started off as just sort of a quick note, but it turned into a relatively comprehensive description of my model of the post-2007 housing market, and my readers seem to like it.
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Robert Cruickshank @robertcruickshank.com · 01/09/2026
This is ridiculous. It's like banning Hondas and Toyotas in the 1980s, rather than making the US auto industry actually compete and make good, electric cars people want
seattletimes.com
Chinese cars could be huge in U.S., and that’s the problem, officials say
An existing 100% tariff and 2027 Commerce Department restrictions on connected vehicles from China make it impractical to import Chinese vehicles today. A Senate bill would codify that exclusion.
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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Republicans who see Canada as an enemy has leapt up this year, similar to how Republicans’ approval of Putin shot up in 2016. Virtually no anti-Canada US constituency before this year, and virtually no pro-Putin constituency before 2016. Out of nowhere. Now millions say that’s their position.
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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Cyclical changes are more immediate and salient, and so secular changes in housing affordability are commonly mistaken for cyclical changes in real time - both on the way up and on the way down back toward affordability. The Intuition Chart kevinerdmann.substack.com/p/the-chart?...
kevinerdmann.substack.com
The Intuition Chart
I consider this chart to be a handy guide for the weird intuition people have to always be wrong about housing trends.
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