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A few months ago, I wrote about the fact that with U.S. houses priced as they are, and the strength of the U.S. dollar, it was perhaps time to consider shopping for your next property somewhere up north. Since then, the housing market has stayed strong, the dollar has stayed strong, and Chinese investment in…

Throughout the first half of the aughts, U.S. rental property vacancy rates hovered at the high 7% range (between 7.75 and 7.9). With the ’08 crash, vacancy rates jumped substantially, to well over 8%. But since the peak in 2009, vacancy rates have been steadily declining. As I pointed out last week, new houses aren’t…

For almost all of 2015 we had an unusual state of affairs — the housing market looked great, because the filings for new permits kept looking great; but at the same time, housing starts didn’t manage to keep up, and sometimes even fell. The Fiscal Times has an interesting take on this that I hadn’t…

Steve Goldstein, D.C. Bureau Chief for Marketwatch, contends that manufacturing and housing are yin-and-yang in the markets. While it is true that the housing market is running along at a frothy pace (and as Goldstein points out, is expected to grow at roughly twice the rate of inflation for the next two years), and it is true…

Towards the end of last year, I wrote a few times about the fact that we have pretty much fully-recovered from the ’08 crash. In fact, some might argue that we’re in a bubble again, or at least very close. But we don’t often look at (or hear in the news about) what the long-term…

A few weeks ago I wrote about a blog post from the Federal Reserve. In their blog post, they had explained why the rate hike shouldn’t impact long-term mortgage rates. And they were right. In fact, we’ve seen exactly the opposite happen. We’ve had weeks and weeks of decreasing rates on long-term, fixed-rate mortgage rates.…

This blog covered in a post last month the fact that the Fed has indicated a commitment to keeping long-term interest rates in the housing market low. In fact, as we also reported, the Fed rate hike was unlikely to affect long-term, fixed-rate mortgages. However, markets are complicated, and the Fed has more than one…

Fitch, the rating agency, released their predictions for the 2016 housing market, and concluded that, “low oil prices, generally robust employment growth, demographics, pent-up demand, still attractive affordability/housing valuations, and a steady, moderate easing in credit standards should further stimulate housing demand in 2016”. And that was their prediction, based on the likelihood of mortgage rates going…

Everyone knows that student debt is mounting. There’s an entire generation coming of age under a mountain of debt, with the value of that debt (in terms of job prospects) being somewhat questionable. In a somewhat under-reported change in mortgage regulations, life got a little harder for those carrying such debt. As of last September, the…

U.S. demographics are changing. Much of the talk around that topic focuses on aging Boomers and the migration of Millennials back into cities. But there are other demographic changes as well. The caucasian population will start to shrink in the next ten years, while Hispanic and Asian populations are expected to double over the next…