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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Even More on Filtering and 2008 kevinerdmann.substack.com/p/even-more-...

Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Going forward, price levels will remain elevated, but the effect of tariffs on inflation rates will be minimal. Though, of course, on any given Wednesday morning, Trump might come up with a new illegal tariff to impose. libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2026/10/how-...

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

10 yr real rates are up 1% and the inflation spread is flat. You could try to say that the Fed credibly signaled that they will raise the target rate to keep inflation in check. But, it's impossible for Fed signals in the last month to have credibly signaled a 1% higher target for 10 full years.

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The rising interest rates strike me as quite bullish. If they had gone this far in the OTHER direction over the past week, I would have been increasing my bond position. This is not how a yield curve acts in a weak economy.

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

That has nothing to do with what homes are built where. It has everything to do with how many. And once they are there, families will SORT THEMSELVES into the adequate or inadequate stock of homes. THEY are the filtering. You can't be pro-affordability and be a filtering skeptic. 3/3

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Notice, the demand cycle tends to move prices up across the entire market. otoh, the effect of supply over 20 years is entirely progressive. More supply lowers rents and prices EXCLUSIVELY at the low end, and the lack of it raises them. 2/

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Cyclical demand is fast-acting & supply is slow-acting. In the right panel, the difference between the red & yellow lines is a big housing cycle in Las Vegas, 2002-2005. Left, from yellow to green is the big Austin cycle in 2022. The difference between orange & black is supply. Austin ftw. 1/

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Hold up any explanation about housing supply in the last 30 years against this chart (single-family homes in the Northeast - Pennsylvania and states to the east) and ask yourself how in the world my explanation became the "contrarian" one instead of those. fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PERMI...

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

"Housing is expensive because people pay more to move to the nicer neighborhoods." The difference between prices in those neighborhoods is less than it used to be, not more. 4/

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

"The median Phoenix household has record high income." Housing is taking 3 years of the poorest families' incomes relative to the richest families. They don't care about you statistic. They want their 3 years back. 3/

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Also, btw, here is a chart of home price/rent ratios in Phoenix over time, arranged by ZIP code income. This chart overturns so many apple carts. "The average home price in Phoenix is the same today as it was in 2005." Metro area averages tell you nothing about what has changed since 2005. 2/

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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 · 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 · 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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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

btw, Nashville is a real housing winner. Here are permits in the central county vs. the rest of the metro. It isn't sprawl that increased. It's infill. And there are a lot of recent reforms that should make the future even brighter. www.mercatus.org/research/pol... fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1Ypwe

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Ignore that chart. I made a statistical error. It's just 2 separate exponential growth paths that are scaled until 2000, then the employee growth path changes, but the reap per capita growth remains. So the op was just a chart crime. Here's real GDP regressed on employees and time.

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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 · 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 · 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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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

It's very much the other way. kevinerdmann.substack.com/p/why-the-ec...

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Markets often need active public direction.

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

"The expensive cities are geographically limited." Looks at Google Maps, 10 miles from Boston city center.

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Thoughts on inflation and monetary policy scottsumner.substack.com/p/thoughts-o...

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Yeah. Seems to be a drop in labor force participation rather than adult population.

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

What’s happening in Phoenix? fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1XS31

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

This little misfit made me laugh or smile at least 5 times a day. A couple days ago he seemed a little off. Then he vomited and just laid there. For the next 24 hours as we came to realize there was nothing to do for him, he just quietly looked at us with trusting eyes. I am gutted.

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

Poll: Is this combination of trends bullish or bearish? 2 replies are below (Bullish and Bearish) Like a reply to vote for it.

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

The claim that high housing costs are overstated because homes are larger and families are smaller is so wrong that it qualifies as a lie. kevinerdmann.substack.com/p/no-homes-a...

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

That's yet another 30 year old talking point.

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

From 1986 to 1993, the average size of a new home increased from 1,494 sq. ft. to 1,963 sq. ft. Today, the average new home is 1,949 sq. ft. A lot of people are 3 decades into a commitment to a falsehood.

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Des Moines builds enough to avoid displacing existing residents. San Diego doesn't. The high price of homes in San Diego is the price families are willing to pay to not be forced to move away from San Diego, which isn't that much different than the price Des Moines residents would pay if forced to.

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Resharing this because I think it hit the mark. The Keynes and Hayek Rap Battle, in Hindsight open.substack.com/pub/kevinerd...

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

I can‘t not share this. It is magnificent. Poetry. The human mind is capable of wonders.

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

I’ve just seen a 1996 painting titled “Cat at dinner” that anticipates the “Woman yelling at a cat” meme, and I have more questions than answers. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman_y...

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

The population growth of the Closed Access cities is only above average when they are getting poorer. Agglomeration economies!🤷‍♂️ kevinerdmann.substack.com/p/another-co...

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Happened upon this early radicalizer. The earliest and deepest declines in homeownership were top income quintile borrowers in expensive cities. Mostly voluntary before the crisis. Middle income homeownership only declined after federal regulators cut off mortgage access in 2008. 1/

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

The vacancy rate in the Midwest is now nearly as low as it is in the Northeast. Does anyone think inadequate housing is similar in scale in the Midwest as it is in Boston & NYC?

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

If a city faces a natural demand for 10% growth, the effect of not growing on real estate values is an order of magnitude higher than the agglomeration effects of growing. Facets of the Housing Crisis, A Series: Part 4 open.substack.com/pub/kevinerd...

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

When you chart home prices against incomes, the effect of a shortage shows up clearly as a uniform scarcity premium across a market. Cities historically never left the blue trend. The elevation is very peculiar. open.substack.com/pub/kevinerd...

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Facets of the Housing Crisis, A Series: Part 3 open.substack.com/pub/kevinerd...

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Kevin Erdmann @kevinerdmann.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

You can see it in real time in Grand Rapids' rent trend. Rents flattened after permits rose to the 4,000 range, then rose again when permits declined, and are flat again now that permits are back to 4,000. 24,000 new homes will reverse that 20% rent inflation and allow new households to form.

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