Source: The Hustle, Zachary Crockett
Photo: An abandoned house in Japan (Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images; edited by The Hustle)

In the next decade, it’s estimated that one in every three homes in Japan will be vacant. Why?

Japan’s Yamanashi prefecture, southwest of Tokyo, is home to some of the Earth’s most stunning land. Mount Fuji looms on the horizon, cherry blossoms line the roads, and Buddhist temples dot the foothills. It is, by all measures, an enviable place to live.

But if you pay close attention to the homes in the region, you may notice that many of them are in a state of neglect.

Homes like this are an increasingly familiar sight in Japan.

According to a 2023 report from Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, there are now more than 9m vacant homes in the country. That’s an astonishing 13.8% of Japan’s entire housing supply. And the problem is only getting worse: by 2038, one in every three homes are projected to be vacant.

Of course, every nation has its share of vacant homes. In real estate, there are always unoccupied rental units and on-the-market properties that can’t find buyers. But Japan’s rate far outpaces that of other developed countries like the US, UK, France, and South Korea.

What sets Japan apart is that a substantial portion of its vacant properties — some 3.9m — are entirely abandoned.

In Japan, these abandoned structures are called akiya. And they aren’t just in the countryside. Major cities, like Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya, are riddled with thousands of condo units and single-family homes that serve no economic purpose.

Why?

A population crisis

Part of the answer is simple. For several decades, Japan has grappled with a declining population. The death rate is now higher than the birth rate.

Today, the country is home to ~122m people — 4m fewer than 20 years ago. The UN forecasts that Japan’s population could dip below 100m by as soon as 2050.

As the population has declined, it has also aged. Nearly 30% of Japan’s residents are 65+ years old. That’s roughly 3x the world average.

The median age in Japan is 49 years old — the second-highest in the world, trailing only Monaco. Many of these elderly citizens have left their homes empty and moved into care facilities or the homes of family members.

At the same time, Japan has rapidly urbanized. Many young people have migrated from the countryside to major cities. Across the country, smaller villages in particular have been left with a glut of homes.

Some of these towns have become virtual ghost towns.

In Nagoro, a remote village in Tokushima Prefecture, the population has dipped from 300+ to less than 30. And the remaining residents have created hundreds of life-sized dolls and placed them in front of abandoned homes to make the village feel less empty.

But Japan’s aging and declining population only explains one part of its abandoned housing stock.

Japan’s old house conundrum

In the US, there is a certain romanticism around older homes.

Younger buyers often prefer the character and build quality of a century-old craftsman over a newer build. In fact, last year the median sales price of an existing home ($441,500) surpassed that of a new home ($401,800).

You’d think Japan — home to 1,400-year-old temples and many of the world’s oldest businesses — would share this appreciation. But this is not the case.

In Japan, most homes fully depreciate after a few decades, making older houses largely undesirable. The Japanese real estate market is driven by a “scrap-and-build” culture that favors frequent teardowns and new builds. In fact, the average lifespan of a home in Japan is just 32 years, compared to 55 years in the US and 77 years in the UK.

There are several explanations for this:

Structural concerns: After the widespread destruction of WWII, hundreds of thousands of homes were rapidly rebuilt across Japan and quality was sacrificed for expediency. Shoddy construction became a major problem in 2011, when a 9.0-magnitude earthquake completely leveled 130k+ homes, and damaged an additional 1m structures.

Sentimental reasons: Many homes contain butsudan, ancestral altars inside the property that contain memorial tablets, statues, or scrolls dedicated to deceased ancestors who are the spiritual guardians of the household. Many family members are opposed to demolishing and/or selling the property.

Financial practicality: Japan’s tax code incentivizes building new homes over purchasing existing homes, and banks are more amenable to financing new builds.

When elderly residents move out of their older homes, they are often either opposed to selling, or struggle to find a buyer. And family members see the homes as more of a burden than a valuable economic asset.

As such, hard-to-sell older homes often sit abandoned.

The vacant land hack

On the surface, Japan’s abandoned house situation seems pretty straightforward: Japan’s population is declining, younger people are urbanizing, and nobody wants to inhabit old homes.

But there’s a hidden side to the problem, too.

If you own a vacant lot in Japan, you’re taxed based on the assessed value of the land. But if you build a new property on that land and accrue debt, it’s considered leased land and you can greatly reduce your tax burden. As a result, land owners have continued to build new housing supply, even as demand declines.

In a sense, says Japan housing expert Shu Matsuo, Japanese land owners are manufacturing vacancy — or at least compounding the problem.

Want a $10k house?

This supply-demand imbalance has created interesting opportunities for foreign investors in the market for affordable housing.

On websites like AkiyaMart, Akiyahopper, and AkiyaHub, you can find hundreds of abandoned homes listed for sale — often for less than $10k USD.

A selection of abandoned homes for sale in Japan for (Akiya Japan)

Interest in the term “Akiya” (“empty house” in Japanese) has ballooned in recent years on TikTok and YouTube, largely driven by the viral exploits of expat influencers like Anton Wormann.

Wormann, a 34-year-old ex-model, relocated to Japan in 2018 and purchased an abandoned 2,690-square-foot, 11-room farm in the town of Kujukuri for $15k. He chronicled his journey rehabbing the home, and it’s now a luxury Airbnb that books $11k/month in revenue.

He has since replicated the process with a number of other properties, typically spending between $50-100k on renovations per build.

For Wormann, and other Americans disillusioned by the dismal US housing market, the millions of abandoned homes in Japan are an opportunity to capitalize on a growing international interest in Japanese tourism.

Some municipal governments have launched “akiya banks” to connect buyers with vacant homes. Other regions are offering subsidies to renovate, or even giving properties away for free, provided buyers commit to living in them.

But these are partial solutions to broader structural concerns: depopulation, mismatches between housing supply and demand, and policies that unintentionally encourage overbuilding.

In Japan, each empty home is a reminder of the work that needs to be done.

https://thehustle.co/originals/why-japan-has-millions-of-abandoned-houses

Source: Realtor.com, Keith Griffith
Photo: Major Homebuilders See Rising Orders but Shrinking Profits as Incentives Squeeze Margins (Matt McClain/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Major homebuilders are facing a tough contradiction, with orders rising but profits frequently shrinking as the use of price cuts and incentives cuts into margins.

In earnings reports this week, D.R. Horton and PulteGroup both showed the familiar split: Orders held up better than profits, while incentives and affordability pressure kept margins under strain.

D.R. Horton posted a drop in earnings and revenue, but said net sales orders rose 11%. Meanwhile, PulteGroup narrowly missed earnings per share estimates on a sharp decline in net income, but still grew net new orders 3%.

D.R. Horton CEO Paul Romanowski said on a call with investors that affordability challenges continue to loom over the market, forcing builders to offer generous incentives such as mortgage rate buydowns and closing cost contributions, in addition to outright price cuts.

“New-home demand remains impacted by affordability constraints and cautious consumer sentiment,” he said. “Our sales incentives increased during the second quarter, and we expect incentives to remain elevated for the rest of the year, with the level dependent on demand, mortgage interest rates, and other market conditions.”

Meanwhile, PulteGroup CEO Ryan Marshall had to explain to investors why the company’s gross margin on home sales in the quarter was 24.4%, below Wall Street expectations and down from 27.5% a year ago.

“Our ability to offer low fixed-rate mortgages and other incentives is certainly helping solve the affordability riddle for some,” he said. “But this comes at a price, as incentives in the quarter reached 10.9% of gross sales price.”

For several years now, homebuilders have responded to sluggish buyer demand by ramping up incentives, with the rate buydown one of their most potent weapons in the age of elevated mortgage rates.

“The affordability crunch of this high mortgage rate market we’ve now been dealing with for several years is leading builders to offer serious incentives on homes they have for sale, whether that’s price reductions, mortgage rate buydowns, or free upgrades to build-to-order homes,” says Realtor.com® senior economist Joel Berner.

“Buyers are feeling skittish, and builders are willing to work with them to help them feel like they’re getting a good deal on their new home,” Berner explains. “But in order to stay in business, they have to make up the compressed margins on volume.”

Many builders are choosing to sacrifice profits on individual homes for overall sales count growth, because homebuyers are currently hard to pin down, says Berner.

Marshall acknowledged PulteGroup is deliberately using incentives to preserve momentum.

“Our expectation is that we’re going to continue to lean into the forward commitments,” he said, referring to rate buydowns and similar offers.

Still, deals offered by homebuilders probably won’t last forever. For buyers, now is a great time to pounce on deals for new construction, says Berner.

“By being so elusive amid their affordability pressures, buyers have forced builders to offer them high volumes of buyer-friendly deals. When buyer confidence eventually returns, these incentives may be gone, so savvy buyers will snap them up while they can,” the economist says.

Keith Griffith is a journalist at Realtor.com covering housing policy, real estate news, and trends in the residential market. Previously, his work has appeared in Business Insider, The Street, Chicago Sun-Times, New York Post, and Daily Mail, among other publications. He has a master’s degree in economic and business journalism from Columbia University.

https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/homebuilder-incentives-pulte-horton-earnings

Source: Knowledge@Wharton, Angie Basiouny
Photo: Knowledge@Wharton

Mortgage modifications during the Great Recession helped distressed borrowers keep their homes and accumulate more capital gains wealth, a new Wharton study finds.

Mortgage modifications that helped borrowers keep their homes during the Great Recession were designed for short-term relief, but they had extraordinary long-term effects on wealth.

A new study from Fernando Ferreira, who chairs the real estate department at Wharton, finds that 85% of distressed borrowers who got modifications such as forbearance or interest rate reductions were still in their homes by 2013, compared with 49% of borrowers who didn’t receive modifications.

By 2022, more than a decade after the subprime mortgage scheme triggered a global financial collapse, assisted borrowers were still 19% more likely to be homeowners. And they had accumulated an average of $83,000 more in capital gains wealth.

“That’s more than a whole year of wages for a lot of people,” Ferreira said. “Not losing their house at the lowest point in price, which is when the market collapsed, was very beneficial for families because the prices increased so much that they built up a lot of wealth.”

The study, “Does Homeownership Matter? The Long-term Consequences of Losing a House During the Great Recession,” was published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Co-authors are Heidi Artigue, doctoral candidate in applied economics at Wharton; Patrick Bayer, economics professor at Duke University; and Stephen Ross, economics professor at the University of Connecticut.

The answer to the question posited by the scholars in their paper title is a resounding yes, Ferreira said.

“The headline is that homeownership matters for housing wealth,” he said. “If you look at the recent past, it’s incredibly valuable for building up wealth. You can do anything that you want with that. You have options, especially upon retirement.”

Housing Affordability Is a Hot-Button Issue

The study is the first to estimate the long-term financial effect of homeownership in the U.S. Ferreira said the team wanted to study the topic because housing is such a critical economic and social issue, which also makes it a political issue. For Americans, owning a home has long been considered a pathway to individual wealth accumulation, and the government has spent billions to subsidize homeowners.

“Our goal was not to try to reform the system. It was a simpler goal of saying that we understand homeownership is important, so let’s try to causally estimate that. What are the outcomes that we can measure?” Ferreira said.

The team obtained detailed financial data on more than 375,000 borrowers, then focused on those in the sample set who were more than 90 days behind on their mortgage in 2010. Delinquent borrowers represented about 18% of the set. Then they tracked those borrowers over time using credit reports.

In addition to the significant gap in home retention and accumulated wealth, the study also found an interesting sidenote on home equity lines of credit (HELOC). These loans, which allow homeowners to borrow against their equity, decreased dramatically in the years following the Great Recession as lenders tightened controls. Although HELOC rates began to rebound by 2014, they still remain below pre-recession levels. It’s an important point for the study, Ferreira said, because the lack of access to HELOCs likely affected consumer consumption.

“In the past, people used to consider their homes as ATM machines by borrowing and using the house as a collateral. That stopped after the Great Recession, but it could return at some point if credit constraints ease,” he said. “Because it has not, we don’t see people using that extra housing wealth for consumption purposes in the short term.”

How Homeownership Affects Consumption and Creditworthiness

The study is also notable for what it didn’t find. The data revealed that retaining homeownership had little effect on consumption, creditworthiness, or neighborhood quality. To measure consumption, the scholars looked at credit card and auto loan activity before and after the recession. And to measure creditworthiness, they looked at credit scores from 2004 to 2022. There were no divergent patterns between distressed borrowers who received mortgage modifications and those who did not; both groups rode the same wave as the economy cratered then recovered.

The scholars then turned their attention to housing mobility and neighborhood quality. Homeowners who lost their residences were twice as likely to change ZIP codes following the recession as they became renters. But moving into rentals didn’t mean they compromised on quality. They still lived in neighborhoods that were comparable in terms of income distribution. The abundance of rental housing following the crash may be the reason, according to the authors.

“People confuse homeownership with a good neighborhood. That’s not necessarily true, especially if you are young,” Ferreira said, noting that renters often find smaller units in better neighborhoods where they can’t afford to buy. “Homeownership is everywhere, in poor neighborhoods and in rich neighborhoods.”

Implications for Policy

The professor said the study was not meant to make a political statement. The scholars wanted to focus on the risks and rewards of homeownership. But the results have policy implications, nonetheless. It shows that government intervention in the form of mortgage modifications helped homeowners stay in place, which helped them accumulate more housing wealth over time.

“If you can’t keep your house, it adds to the negative labor market shock. So, being able to tap into those modifications is important,” Ferreira said.

Still, he acknowledges that homeownership isn’t for everyone. Homes are the largest purchase that most people will make in their lives, and there are many considerations beyond cost.

“Homeownership is risky. You don’t know if the value will go up or decline. You may have a negative income shock. For some people, it does not make sense,” Ferreira said. “What we show in the paper is another perspective in this comprehensive view of homeownership.”

https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/how-homeownership-helps-build-wealth

Source: Knowledge@Wharton, Susan M. Wachter
Photo: Dillon Kydd on Unsplash

As mortgage rates rise and home prices remain elevated, Wharton’s Susan Wachter explains why the U.S. housing market’s core problem is not financial instability, but affordability — and what can be done to address it.

Mortgage rates are over 6% again, house prices are hovering at unaffordable levels, and the spring homebuying season is looking grim. For many — especially younger households — the dream of homeownership feels further out of reach than ever.

Yet the housing outlook isn’t entirely bleak. Beneath the discouraging headlines lie two encouraging sets of facts: First, home sales are up 1.7% month-to-month in the most recent data, prior to the run-up in rates in early March, and inventory is down, which suggest that the underlying market is slowly healing. And second, bellwethers of risk in the important housing finance market — the mortgage spread over 10-year treasuries and the yield on credit risk transfers, which prices default risk — are both down from their highs.

The United States’ housing finance system has proven remarkably resilient. The institutions that underpin mortgage lending helped millions of Americans remain in their homes during COVID-19 and its aftermath, one of the most volatile economic periods in modern history.

Despite an increase in inventory, the real challenge now isn’t financial instability. It’s affordability.

That distinction matters.

During the COVID crisis, policymakers feared a wave of mortgage defaults that could ripple through the financial system. Instead, the opposite happened. Forbearance programs — enabled by the structural strength of the U.S. housing finance system — allowed borrowers to pause mortgage payments without losing their homes. Housing finance provided by the GSEs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and by the government agency Ginnie Mae, played a central role. By purchasing or guaranteeing mortgages, they ensured that lenders had the liquidity to keep making new loans even as the economy shut down in March 2020. That backstop allowed relief to struggling borrowers while enabling the broader mortgage market to continue functioning. The results were striking. Millions of households received temporary payment relief. Foreclosures remained historically low. And lenders continued issuing mortgages even during the most uncertain months of the pandemic.

Despite an increase in inventory, the real challenge now isn’t financial instability. It’s affordability.

Just as important, the structure of American mortgages protected borrowers from another shock: rising interest rates. In many countries, mortgage rates reset every few years. When rates spike, homeowners suddenly face sharply higher monthly payments. In the United States, however, most homeowners hold 30-year fixed-rate mortgages. When inflation surged and interest rates climbed, existing homeowners avoided payment shocks.

That stability helped prevent the kind of cascading housing distress seen in the Global Financial Crisis.

A Supply Shortage for Working Households

But stability does not guarantee affordability. Today’s housing challenge looks very different from the one that triggered the 2008 financial crisis. The mortgage system is working. Credit markets are functioning. Most existing homeowners are financially secure. The problem is that millions of Americans — especially younger ones — cannot afford to enter the market in the first place. Home prices surged during the pandemic as remote work reshaped where people wanted to live. Demand for larger homes, suburban locations, and flexible living arrangements pushed prices upward at a pace far faster than income growth.

New construction has picked up, particularly at the higher end of the market. That added supply has helped slow price appreciation in many areas. But it hasn’t solved the deeper structural issue: a shortage of homes affordable to working households. This shortage has been building for more than a decade. After the 2008 housing crash, home construction collapsed and took years to recover. Many small builders left the market permanently. Local zoning restrictions tightened in many communities. Land costs and construction labor shortages increased. As a result, the United States built millions fewer homes than demographic demand required.

Today’s housing challenge looks very different from the one that triggered the 2008 financial crisis.

At the same time, wage growth for younger households has not kept pace with rising housing costs. For many first-time buyers, the challenge is not just saving for a down payment — it is qualifying for a mortgage large enough to buy a home in their region. In that sense, today’s housing affordability crisis is as much an income problem as it is a supply problem. Its implications reach far beyond the housing market.

For decades, homeownership has been one of the most reliable ways American families build wealth. Monthly mortgage payments gradually turn into equity, creating financial security and intergenerational opportunity. When younger generations cannot access that pathway, wealth gaps widen. Generation Z and younger millennials are increasingly confronting that reality. Many stay renters longer than earlier generations, while others live with family while saving for housing that keeps moving out of reach.

Restoring the Path to Homeownership

From a societal standpoint, the goal should be clear: help the next generation move from their parents’ basements onto the homeownership ladder. The encouraging news is that we do not need to reinvent the housing finance system to make progress. What should be done?

First, the United States must expand housing supply — particularly entry-level homes. Local governments can modernize zoning rules, speed up permitting, and allow more “missing middle” housing types such as townhomes, duplexes, and accessory dwelling units. Second, policymakers should encourage builders to construct homes aimed at first-time buyers. Incentives, tax credits, and streamlined approvals can help tilt construction toward more affordable price points. Third, responsible mortgage access for creditworthy borrowers must remain a priority. Down payment assistance programs, shared-equity models, and first-time buyer initiatives can help bridge affordability gaps without introducing excessive financial risk.

From a societal standpoint, the goal should be clear: help the next generation move from their parents’ basements onto the homeownership ladder.

Business leaders also have a stake in this issue. Housing affordability is increasingly a workforce challenge. When workers cannot afford to live near job centers, companies struggle to recruit and retain talent. Long commutes reduce productivity and quality of life, while regional economic growth slows. In other words, housing affordability is a social issue — and an issue for state and local economies.

The United States demonstrated during the pandemic that its housing finance system can withstand extraordinary shocks. Borrowers remained protected, lending continued, and the market avoided the kind of collapse seen in earlier crises. That resilience is a major achievement. Now the task is to translate that financial stability into broader access to homeownership. Expanding supply, supporting first-time buyers, and aligning housing policy with economic growth can ensure that the next generation has a realistic path to owning a home. If we succeed, the housing market’s current gloom may prove temporary.

If we don’t, the dream of homeownership risks becoming something far fewer Americans can attain.

https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/opinion/housing-is-stable-but-still-out-of-reach-for-many-americans

Source: MSN, Pauline Lacsamana
Photo: Courtesy of Ama

Why we love this deal

Owning a home is a milestone that many have dreamed about. But with rising prices, it’s a goal that feels less and less attainable. Homes can cost anywhere from $150K to millions of dollars, depending on your location and criteria. However, there’s a solution that many are turning to in lieu of a standard house, and that’s investing in a tiny home.

Believe it or not, a place you can get one from is none other than Amazon, the retailer that truly seems to sell everything. In addition to groceries and a new sectional sofa, you can add a tiny home to your cart and be well on your way to building a tiny but mighty dream home. The Prefab A-Frame Tiny Home caught our eye, and it boasts a cozy, retro design for under $40K.

Why do shoppers love it?

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the median sale price of a home in the United States in 2025 was nearly $411K (AKA not cheap). As a result, tiny homes have risen in popularity due to their affordability and flexibility, but just because they’re more budget-friendly than a standard home doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice style, too. The Prefab A-Frame Tiny Home proves just that with a surprisingly chic and retro design that would easily cost hundreds of thousands of dollars more otherwise.

With an A-frame silhouette, this tiny house taps into the charm of mid-century modern style, but for significantly less. We fully get the appeal of an original mid-century house, but as is the case with many older homes, they typically need a lot of repairs and updates that can cut deep into your budget. This tiny home is the perfect compromise that allows you to start from scratch.

Despite being a tiny home, the A-frame design takes advantage of every inch of vertical space, making the end result spacious and airy. The home is customizable in many ways, fitting two to four bedrooms, a bathroom, a living room, and a kitchen. As a prefab house, the assembly is meant to be easy and completed quickly. Each piece is made of metal, and it utilizes steel panels to create a durable frame that can withstand harsh weather, from snowstorms to heavy rain.

The only catch is that you’ll need to hire professionals to install electrical and plumbing systems. We also suggest doing additional research to ensure you have all of the required permits and are abiding by laws, regulations, and restrictions for your city or state.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/amazon-is-selling-a-cozy-a-frame-tiny-house-that-s-customizable-with-up-to-4-bedrooms-for-under-40k

Source: Fast Company, Adele Peters
Photo: David Esquivel/UCLA

Nearly 10 months after the Eaton wildfire, the rebuild process is slowly getting underway. Now, residents are turning to prefab to build their houses faster, more cheaply, and largely in factories.

At 3:20 a.m. on January 8, Steve Gibson and his wife were jolted awake by a phone call: the Eaton fire was approaching their home in Altadena, California, and they had to evacuate.

“We left in about 15 minutes,” Gibson says. “So we only took our passports, our insurance papers, three pairs of underwear, and our little dog, Cantinflas.” They thought that they’d be able to come back within a few hours. But they soon learned that their house—and their entire block—had been destroyed.

They spent the next few weeks moving from short-term rental to short-term rental, and finally moved into an apartment, though they knew that insurance would only cover the cost temporarily. Then they faced the next challenge: what would it take to rebuild their home?

More than 10 months after the L.A. fires, the rebuilding process in the fire zone is painfully slow. In Altadena, where more than 5,000 houses burned in the Eaton fire, only a few hundred are currently being rebuilt. (Only one, an ADU, has been completed as of mid-November.) But some—including Gibson’s—are moving faster than others because homeowners have turned to prefab construction.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91445960/prefab-housing-rebuild-effort-altadena

Source: Knowledge@Wharton, Angie Basiouny
Photo: Overhead view of constructor workers building a house

New research from Wharton’s Joseph Gyourko looks back 50 years to explain why home prices are so high now.

Homes in America’s Sunbelt don’t cost as much as they do in the sky-high metropolitan markets of New York and California — but they ultimately will if new housing supply continues to decline.

Research from Wharton real estate professor Joseph Gyourko and Harvard economics professor Edward Glaeser shows the rate of new home construction across the Sunbelt has been dropping steadily over the last 30 years, almost converging with the very low growth rates of coastal cities. The more limited the housing supply becomes in places such as Atlanta, Dallas, Phoenix, and Miami, the more those cities resemble Manhattan, Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco in terms of house prices. The current median home prices in America’s top 10 markets range from $605,000 to almost $1.4 million.

“This is an important change, and why that’s important is where’s the job growth in America? The answer is in those Sunbelt markets,” Gyourko said. “We would make a much wider swath of America unaffordable in terms of housing, so it’s a big deal.”

He spoke to This Week in Business about the findings in his co-authored paper titled, “America’s Housing Supply Problem: The Closing of the Suburban Frontier.” While many scholars have examined the complex variables that are contributing to all-time-high home prices, Gyourko and Glaeser dug a little deeper. They analyzed 50 years’ worth of data to explain why home values keep rising, especially in places that were once considered affordable.

“It’s a longer-run problem than I would have thought before we did the research,” Gyourko said.

The “Golden Age” of Housing Construction

Steep mortgage interest rates, the rising cost of building materials, and the buying frenzy of the COVID-19 pandemic have helped to boost prices in recent years, but the data show the problem really began in the 1970s.

“The 1950s and 1960s were a golden age of new construction, with extremely high rates of housing unit production in any market with growing demand,” the professors wrote in the paper. The national housing stock boomed from 36 million units in 1950 to 50 million by 1980.

However, the growth was uneven. In the 1960s, for example, the housing stock in Phoenix grew by 8% a year while Detroit grew by 2.5% and Los Angeles by 4.1%.

By the 1970s and over the next two decades, the growth rates dropped everywhere, amounting to “barely half of the rates seen” during the golden era of the ’50s and ’60s. The downward trend continued into 2000 and persists today.

Although construction is sluggish across the country, the professors said it’s the decline across the Sunbelt that’s most troublesome. Atlanta, Miami, Dallas, and Phoenix were once prolific in building new homes to meet rising demand as their populations swelled. But the build rate for each of those cities has flattened so much that they are now not much higher than in Los Angeles and Detroit. Since 2020, the new housing supply growth rate in all six cities has been below 1%.

Local Governments’ Role in the Housing Crisis

The professors said there is evidence that contradicts the belief that growth is constrained because desirable cities are “built out.” The culprit, they said, is local governments that have enacted regulations that make it difficult to build.

“What’s happened in the Sunbelt, particularly in suburban areas, is [they] are figuring out how to slow and stop new developments. A feature of the American system is that zoning and permitting is a very local decision,” Gyourko said.

He said if Sunbelt cities continue providing inadequate housing supply, homes there will be as expensive as in coastal cities within 20 years, presuming the demand to live in those markets stays high.

“America once responded to demand by delivering more density, but it does no longer. This suggests that not only is America failing to deliver housing in its most productive metropolitan areas, but we are also failing to deliver housing in our most desirable neighborhoods,” the paper stated.

The professors stopped short of prescribing regulatory remedies in their study. But in his interview, Gyourko mentioned the bipartisan ROAD to Housing Act, which passed the U.S. Senate in early October and is headed toward the House. The legislation is aimed at increasing affordable housing across the country by helping cities streamline permitting, modernize zoning codes, and support housing innovation.

“One way to do it is for the federal government to use its resources to incent localities to permit more. But understand that’s a key distinction. The federal government does not issue building permits,” Gyourko said. “I think the most important thing is change at the local level. There has to be a recognition that these high prices are largely — not totally — due to restrictive permitting and higher regulation at the local level.”

https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/what-will-it-take-to-solve-americas-housing-crisis

Source: Fast Company, Lance Lambert
Photo: Lance Lambert, created with Datawrapper; photo: Montri/Adobe Stock

Negative equity is rising in some pandemic boomtowns, yet it’s still nowhere near 2009 territory.

Since the Pandemic Housing Boom fizzled out in the summer of 2022, some overheated parts of the country—particularly in the West, Southwest, and Southeast—have experienced home-price declines from their peak (see this map).

While many of these markets have seen only modest drops, a few metro areas, such as Punta Gorda, Florida, and Austin have undergone what I’d consider “material” home-price corrections, falling 18.6% and 23.0% respectively from their peaks.

These regional home-price declines raise the question: How many mortgage borrowers are actually “underwater”—meaning their house is worth less than their outstanding mortgage balance—right now?

To find out, ResiClub reached out to ICE Mortgage Technology—formerly known as Black Knight, before it was acquired by Intercontinental Exchange for $11.8 billion in 2023.

1.0% —> The share of outstanding homeowner mortgages with negative equity (i.e., underwater) at the end of April 2025, according to data from ICE Mortgage Technology provided to ResiClub this week.*

23.0% —> The share of outstanding homeowner mortgages with negative equity (i.e., underwater) at the end of September 2009, according CoreLogic/FirstAmerica.

Why, on a nationally aggregated basis, are there still not many homeowners underwater, despite home-price declines in some markets?

Nationally aggregate home prices are still pretty close to all-time highs. While many pockets of the West, Southwest, and Southeast have seen home prices decline at least some from the peak, nationally aggregated single-family prices are still pretty close to all-time highs.

Amortization of ultralow mortgage rates. Many homeowners locked in ultralow mortgage rates during the Pandemic Housing Boom. With fixed rates around 2% to 3%, those monthly payments included a larger proportion of principal repayment from the start. That means borrowers have been paying down their balances more aggressively than they would under higher-rate loans. As of Q4 2024, 54% of outstanding mortgage holders have rates below 4.0%, which has helped some borrowers build equity faster and give them a greater buffer.

Few buyers actually purchased at the peak in correction markets. Even in boom-to-correction markets like Cape Coral, Florida, or Austin, only a small share of homeowners bought at the absolute top of the market in spring 2022. Most current homeowners in those areas either bought before or after the peak. This limited exposure at the peak helps explain why negative equity, so far, hasn’t been a big problem, even in some of the hardest-hit metros.

While only 1.0% of outstanding U.S. homeowner mortgages have negative equity, there are few pockets where it’s getting closer to 5.0%—or has even slightly crossed it.

Among the 100 major metro areas for which ICE Mortgage Technology provided data to ResiClub, these 15 metros have the highest share of homeowner mortgages currently underwater:

Cape Coral, Florida —> 7.8%
Lakeland, Florida —> 4.4%
San Antonio —> 4.3%
Austin —> 4.2%
North Port, Florida —> 3.8%
Jacksonville, Florida —> 2.9%
Baton Rouge, Louisiana —> 2.8%
Palm Bay, Florida —> 2.7%
New Orleans —> 2.7%
Deltona, Florida —> 2.6%
Tampa, Florida —> 2.5%
Colorado Springs, Colorado —> 2.3%
Little Rock, Arkansas —> 2.2%
Dallas —> 1.7%
Oklahoma City —> 1.6%

Even in markets like Cape Coral (7.8%) and Austin (4.2%) that have higher shares of outstanding homeowner mortgages that are currently underwater, that’s still far off from the levels seen at the height of the Great Financial Crisis-era bust. For comparison, back in September 2009, a staggering 68% of mortgage borrowers in Nevada, 48% in Arizona, and 45% in Florida were underwater.

So far, in the down markets it’s really just the 2022, 2023, and 2024 vintages being impacted. Even in Austin—a metro where home prices have fallen 23% from their May 2022 peak—only 1.5% of 2021 borrowers are underwater.

Big picture: If home prices in parts of the Southwest, Southeast, and West continue to experience mild home-price pullbacks, the share of recent borrowers who are underwater in those markets will rise beyond the levels we’ve outlined here. However, barring a major downward shift, it still wouldn’t come close to the depths of negative equity seen in 2009 or 2010 anytime soon.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91383991/housing-market-underwater-mortgages-climb-in-florida-texas-markets

Source: Realtor.com, Snejana Farberov
Photo: Realtor.com/Getty Images

The summer housing market is gradually turning more buyer-friendly—especially in two inventory-rich regions where sellers are increasingly slashing prices in a bid to offload properties.

Economists at Realtor.com® analyzed June 2025 housing data from the largest U.S. metros and identified the 10 markets boasting the highest shares of for-sale homes with price reductions, offering house hunters the opportunity to snag properties below the original asking price.

Notably, all the metros in the ranking are located either in the South or the West—areas where the housing market has been sluggish in recent months due to a combination of surging supply and decreasing buyer demand.

“Sellers in these markets are often listing their homes at prices higher than the market can bear, and being forced to adjust when they don’t sell as quickly as hoped for,” explains Relator.com senior economist Joel Berner.

Topping the list is Denver, where roughly 1 out of 3 listed homes in June came with a price cut in an apparent attempt to draw reluctant buyers.

The typical residential property in “Mile High City” cost $609,950, down 3.6% compared with a year ago, and waited 45 days for a buyer last month, according to the latest housing market trends report.

Excessive supply vs. insufficient demand

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Denver has led the nation in inventory recovery, with supply surging more than 88% from the pre-pandemic era. However, buyer demand has not kept pace, resulting in a glut of unsold homes—and forcing many sellers to slash prices.

A similar scenario has unfolded in Phoenix, where nearly a third of all listings had price reductions last month—the second-highest share among major U.S. metros.

The Western pandemic-era boomtown saw its median home price decrease 3% year over year, dropping down to $520,000.

Additionally, Phoenix stood out for having the nation’s highest absolute number of delistings in May, as many local sellers opted to take their homes off the market rather than compromise on their asking price in a climate of buyer wariness fueled by economic uncertainty and elevated mortgage interest rates.

For sellers who cannot just take their ball and go home, cutting the asking price might be the only play left.

“Supply is outpacing demand in these markets, and sellers who don’t have the choice to delist because they have to move for life reasons are being forced to take less for their home than they anticipated,” says Berner.

Austin, TX, is in the same boat as Denver and Phoenix owing to its surging inventory, which climbed nearly 70% compared with the city’s 2019 norms.

Faced with slower buyer demand, the bustling economic hub saw its share of listings with price cuts reach 32.3% in June, the third-highest level in the U.S.

Tampa, FL and Dallas, TX ranked fourth and fifth, respectively, for the share of for-sale homes offering discounts, topping 30% for both metros.

Beyond the top five metros offering the steepest reductions, budget-conscious homebuyers can still save big in places like Colorado Springs, CO, Jacksonville, FL, Portland, OR, Salt Lake City, and Charleston, SC.

While this trend spells bad news for sellers in the oversupplied regions, Berner says that buyers have an opportunity to get a great deal—especially if they can make a purchase mostly in cash and sidestep the current high mortgage rates.

“If mortgage rates fall, we expect buyer activity to pick back up and for price reductions to slow down,” he notes.

1. Denver

Share of listings with price cuts: 33.7%
Median listing price: $609,950
Price change year-over-year (YoY): -3.6%
Median days on market: 45

2. Phoenix

Share of listings with price cuts: 33.2%
Median listing price: $520,000
Price change year-over-year (YoY): -3%
Median days on market: 65

3. Austin, TX

Share of listings with price cuts: 32.3%
Median listing price: $524,950
Price change year-over-year (YoY): -4.5%
Median days on market: 58

4. Tampa, FL

Share of listings with price cuts: 31.2%
Median listing price: $419,000
Price change year-over-year (YoY): -1.4%
Median days on market: 48

5. Dallas

Share of listings with price cuts: 30.6%
Median listing price: $440,000
Price change year-over-year (YoY): -2.3%
Median days on market: 50

6. Colorado Springs, CO

Share of listings with price cuts: 30.2%
Median listing price: $515,000
Price change year-over-year (YoY): -1.5%
Median days on market: 43

7. Jacksonville, FL

Share of listings with price cuts: 30.1%
Median listing price: $408,995
Price change year-over-year (YoY): -2.6%
Median days on market: 67

8. Portland, OR

Share of listings with price cuts: 29.6%
Median listing price: $615,000
Price change year-over-year (YoY): -1.6%
Median days on market: 49

9. Salt Lake City

Share of listings with price cuts: 28.8%
Median listing price: $595,000
Price change year-over-year (YoY): -1.2%
Median days on market: 48

10. Charleston, SC

Share of listings with price cuts: 28.5%
Median listing price: $535,000
Price change year-over-year (YoY): 1.1%
Median days on market: 50

Snejana Farberov is a reporter at Realtor.com covering the U.S. housing market and the latest domestic real estate trends. She has worked as a general assignment journalist in New York City and Long Island for 16 years, writing for New York Post, Daily Mail, and News 12. Snejana earned bachelor’s degrees in journalism and Italian from St. John’s University, followed by a master’s degree from Columbia University School of Journalism.

https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/phoenix-arizona-homes-sell-below-asking-price-june-2025

Source: The Guardian, Marzio Mian
Photo: The bay of Vlorë on the mainland of Albania, opposite Sazan Island. (Nikos/Alamy)

Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner have spent more than $1bn on an Albanian island that will be a luxury resort – once the unexploded ordnance has been removed

On Sazan, a small island off the coast of Albania, the landscape is Jurassic. Ferns, giant lavender, plumbago, rosemary, broom and laurels grow on the mountain at its centre. The view from the top, with its dramatic sunsets, is dizzyingly beautiful.

Albanians call Sazan Ishulli i Trumpëve – Trump Island. Until now mostly untrammelled by development, it is on the verge of becoming a mecca for ultra-luxury tourism, another addition to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner’s real-estate portfolio. Speaking on the Lex Fridman podcast in July 2024, Trump could barely conceal her excitement: “I’m working with my husband, we have this 1,400-acre island in the Mediterranean and we’re bringing in the best architects and the best brands,” she said. “It’s going to be extraordinary.”

When I reached Kushner by phone the same month, I detected brimming enthusiasm for Sazan, which he seemed to regard as something of a treasure. He said he plans “to create the ideal resort that I’d want to be at with my family and with my friends”.

Before I visited the island, I marvelled at the thought of traversing its roughly 40 miles of trails, climbing its mountains covered in rainforest and exploring its deep waterways with names such as the Bay of Paradise, Hell’s Gorge, Devil’s Gulf and Admiral’s Beach. I wanted to see it before the phrase “I’m going to Sazan” becomes the prerogative of the rich.

When I got there, on a clear day in July 2024, I found that the island doesn’t lend itself to getting lost: it is covered in signs depicting skull and crossbones, warning of landmines. My guide, Arbër Celaj, a lieutenant commander in the Albanian navy, stopped me from venturing too far. He did not want to get a dressing down from his superiors.

Sazan lies between the Adriatic Sea and the Ionian Sea, strategically positioned at the entrance to the bay of Vlorë, in the strait of Otranto that separates Italy from Albania. But as Celaj explained, “Sazan’s climate is not Mediterranean – it’s subtropical. You can see from the vegetation. The biodiversity is crazy.” Indeed, the brush seemed to have emerged from Spielberg’s computer, giving rise to a jungle of colossal ash trees, hornbeams, maritime pines and holm oaks.

Unable to stray off the beaten path, I made do with glimpses of carpets of rare ferns and valleys of tall grass sloping down to turquoise waters. It was like standing at the dawn of time, watching the landscape be created. Kushner was also speechless when he first saw it in 2021, he told me: “I was just very surprised that something like that existed in the middle of the Mediterranean and hadn’t been developed.” Preliminary approval from the Albanian government for Kushner’s project came on 30 December 2024.

I last spoke to Kushner and his associate Asher Abehsera, the CEO and cofounder with Kushner of Affinity Global Development, in July 2024. Jonathan Gasthalter, the spokesperson for Affinity Partners, a Miami-based firm belonging to Kushner managing $4.6bn in assets, did not respond to multiple emails and text messages asking for comment from Kushner or Abehsera on updates to the real-estate project.

Implausibly, Sazan’s environment owes a lot to communism. During its communist era, from 1946 to 1991, Albania was known as Europe’s North Korea and Sazan became a symbol of extreme isolation: an inaccessible military fortress that dictator Enver Hoxha, who feared the country would fall prey to a superpower, imagined could help defend them against an attack from Nato or members of the Warsaw Pact.

For decades, soldiers stationed on the island waited for such an attack, scanning the horizon, listening for the submarine that sooner or later would emerge from the depths of the Adriatic. There was a military base on the island, with living quarters, a theatre, a school and a hospital. By the 1970s, about 150 military families lived on the island without contact with the mainland. “But they were privileged. They had food, clothing, education, appliances,” Celaj told me. The waiting only ended with the fall of the regime in 1991.

Walking along a trail with my guide, we came across several bomb shelters and tunnels designed to store supplies and ammunition or act as hideouts in the event of a guerrilla war against the imperial invaders. Celaj told me there are about 10 miles of tunnels, now mostly inhabited by bats, vipers and wild rabbits. There are about 3,600 bunkers on Sazan, armoured concrete mushrooms emerging from the vegetation or perched on mountaintops like lookouts against phantom American aircraft carriers or Soviet frigates. Some will be preserved and integrated into the new real-estate project, according to Kushner.

I asked my guide about the signs warning of landmines. “Actually, they’re not exactly landmines,” he said. “This place is full of unexploded ordnance, there are still many areas that need to be cleared.” He pointed to a ravine on the eastern coast, where Affinity Partners wants to develop a significant part of the real-estate project that will span the entire surface of the island. “The [unexploded ordnance are] remnants of the 1990s,” Celaj went on, “when criminals attacked the island right under the noses of the military, looting the weapons and ammunition depots.” The enemy had come in the end, but in small makeshift vessels and speaking the same language as the soldiers.

These days, the island is controlled by Albanian armed forces. It is patrolled by three sailors, who walk back and forth between the rusty and ramshackle docks on the gulf of San Nicolo (the port where Affinity will build the main marina for the yachts, according to Abehsera).

Albania has risen to the top of some of the most prestigious travel rankings in recent years, largely thanks to the prime minister, Edi Rama, who has turned the country into an economic tiger of the Balkans.

I asked Rama if he worried about any political complications relating to the new real-estate project. He told me his country “can’t afford not to exploit a gift like Sazan”, adding: “We need luxury tourism like a desert needs water.” He isn’t afraid of courting controversy, either, especially “if it helps draw attention and bring investment”.

Rama has been “a great partner” and is very forward thinking, according to Kushner. “The government’s clearly seen that it can be something,” he told me during our conversation in July 2024. “They’re building an airport right there [in the Vlöre area].”

Albania isn’t Kushner’s only target: he is also interested in Serbia, where Affinity Partners plans to turn the former defence ministry building in Belgrade into a luxury hotel. Affinity’s business broker in the region is the former US ambassador Richard Grenell, who served as Trump’s special envoy for Serbia and Kosovo peace negotiations between 2019 and 2021. According to the New York Times, while Grenell was special envoy, he pushed a related plan that Serbia and the US jointly redevelop the former defence ministry. He has since joined forces with Kushner on the new development deal, and is now a partner in Affinity. (Kushner told me it was Grenell who first suggested he invest in Albania.)

The bay of Vlorë on the mainland of Albania, opposite Sazan Island. Photograph: Nikos/Alamy
Serbia’s president, the opportunistic Aleksandar Vučić, saw in Grenell and Kushner a chance to get close to Trump should he win reelection, according to the Financial Times. Vučić is, in fact, playing a dangerous game: as well as cosying up to Trump’s acolytes, he has refused to impose sanctions on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. In May 2024, he rolled out the red carpet for Chinese leader Xi Jinping, whose government has made major investments in new infrastructure in Serbia, Reuters reported. All the while, Vučić continues to express his desire to join the EU but refuses to meet Brussels’ main condition: recognising the borders and independence of Kosovo.

When I spoke to Rama, the Albanian premier, I asked what role American investment played in geopolitics. He replied that it was just business, but didn’t deny it could advance a broader political strategy. “We must keep Serbia in the western sphere and get it out from under Moscow’s thumb,” he said. In an interview with the Financial Times in July 2024, Grenell, too, said investments like the real-estate deal to take over the former defence ministry are meant to bring Serbia closer to the US.

Kushner, who served as a senior adviser to Trump from 2017 to 2021, denied using his position to advance any plans to develop Sazan when we spoke in July 2024. “I never met Prime Minister Rama when I was in government,” Kushner told me. “But even if I had, it’s not a conflict of interest. People who serve in government, they build different relationships.” He claimed that interest in Serbia and Albania “is going up tremendously” as a result of his company’s real-estate deals.

Negotiations with Affinity about the sale of Sazan were kept secret. Residents and parliamentarians were not aware of the $1.4bn deal until it was published in the papers.

Mirela Kumbaro, Albania’s minister for tourism and the environment, defended Rama’s decision to strike a deal with Kushner’s company, which was heavily criticised by the opposition. “We can’t compete with Italy, Croatia and Greece in the mass tourism industry. We don’t have enough infrastructure or experience,” she told me. “We have to focus on quality. On value over volume. More profits and fewer problems.”

Nearly 12 million foreign visitors travelled to Albania in 2024, a 15% increase on the previous year, according to local media. That’s “too many for us, and too much pollution”, Kumbaro said. “Sazan is the way to go. The ideal recipe: nature and luxury tourism.” She was enthusiastic about the project, explaining that Affinity is working closely with the government agency in charge of strategic investments, meaning those that exceed €15m.

The trade-off is substantial: zero taxes during the construction phase and the state takes care of all infrastructure, including water, electricity and sewage, according to Kumbaro. Everything else – the sun, the sea, the monk seals and the subtropical jungle – is already there.

That is precisely what worries environmentalists such as Olsi Nika, a marine biologist and the director of the NGO EcoAlbania. “This area is in the Karaburun-Sazan maritime national park. It means the beaches and waters within 2km (1.25 miles) of the shore are protected. What will large public works, the building of docks, yacht traffic and sewage run-off do to the place?”

Abehsera, from Affinity, told me the company had hired the global sustainable development firm Arup as a consultant on the project. “Their practice is principally focused on really accentuating and respecting the local ecology and the environment,” he said.

Kushner, too, had an answer at the ready. “When people announce a development, everyone gets scared,” he said in July 2024. “Everybody assumes the worst. But once they see the plans we have, the way we’re designing it, the way we’re being faithful and considerate of the environment around us, I think that people will be very, very pleased. And again, with developments, you never make everyone happy.”

When I met Abehsera for lunch in Vlöre in August 2024, he gave me a preview of the plans for the island’s development. The hotel, he said, would be a “jewel on the Mediterranean”, the answer to people who ask, “What have I not seen yet?” The design of the hotel would not “impose” on nature; the buildings would be “sculpted or even scalloped by nature”. It will feel “more like you’re nestled in a beautiful tree”.

I was having difficulty following. I asked him whether the island would remain accessible to normal people, to locals who want to make use of its beaches. “I think everyone should have the opportunity to visit the island,” he told me.

Kushner was more sceptical. “We’re creating a very high-end luxury product,” he told me. “One of the most compelling points about the island is just the ability to have privacy … But I also think there are certain aspects of the island we can build out that will give people the opportunity to come visit and enjoy some of the food and the trails.”

I thought back to my afternoon with Celaj. He’d told me that until a few years ago, soldiers on patrol would sometimes report seeing a little grey donkey among the wild fig trees in a clearing or in Hell’s Gorge. Then it would just disappear. I wondered if it was just a legend, or if the grey donkey died along with the mystery of the island, the last bastion of wilderness in the Mediterranean, conquered, in the end, without a single shot being fired. All it took was for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner to climb out of a helicopter and say, “Wow!”

This piece was originally published on Reportagen and the Dial. Translation by Elettra Pauletto

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/24/trump-family-kushner-undeveloped-island-mediterranean-sazan-albania