hello, I have this room I don’t need, 5m². You need it? 1 william dollars

Rent control opponents warn of $300 billion impact to local budgets

Rent control opponents warn of $300 billion impact to local budgets

Quote:

Over the course of a decade, the center’s projections found, the proposed cap on rent would erase $300 billion from home and property values by limiting the earning potential of owners. That would in turn reduce what cities and towns collect from property taxes, forcing decisions about slashing public services or hiking rates in what Evan Horowitz, the executive director of the Tufts research center, called a “cascade of effects.”

“This question is so poorly drafted and has so many issues, it’ll impact not only people and homeowners, but it’s really going to impact cities and towns in ways that I’m not sure that people fully understand,”

The $400K Wall: America’s Housing Market Stays Stubbornly Tight

Gerri Willis of Fox Business delivers a report from the National Homebuilders Show, detailing how constructors are decreasing property dimensions, embracing AI for architectural plans, and championing miniature smart residences to tackle the ongoing housing affordability crunch.

Residential property values continue to ascend, despite a modest softening in mortgage interest rates and initial…

The $400K Wall: America’s Housing Market Stays Stubbornly Tight

It’s my 15 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

How about that!!?

Mortgage rates surge to highest since September, hitting spring housing market

In an aerial view, two-story single family homes line the streets of neighborhood on Jan. 13, 2026 in Thousand Oaks, California.
Kevin Carter | Getty Images

Mortgage rates surged to their highest level since September on Friday as bond yields moved higher due to the war in Iran.
The average rate on the 30-year fixed loan hit 6.41%, according to Mortgage News Daily. That is the highest rate since…

Mortgage rates surge to highest since September, hitting spring housing market

Housing Availability

Home - Healthy Housing Foundation

Key Takeaways from CNBC Fast Money on Housing

Today’s podcast goes over some of the questions asked to me on CNBC’s Fast Money about the Housing market and the Iranian conflict.

Unemployment, consumer sentiment and mortgage rates

Here is a link to the CNBC Fast Money interview.

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2026/03/11/housing-market-is-poised-for-growth-this-year-if-iran-conflict-doesnt-raise-rates-says-housingwire-mohtashami.html

“The key…

Key Takeaways from CNBC Fast Money on Housing

Senate passes bipartisan housing bill to improve access and affordability

So this headline is going around. The specific text is:

“4) LARGE INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR.

(A) IN GENERAL.—The term ‘‘large institutional investor’’

(i) means an investment fund, corporation, general or limited partnership, limited liability company, joint venture, association, or other for-profit entity that is a legal entity structured in a manner that is not aforementioned that

(I) is engaged, in whole or in part, in the business of investing in, owning, renting, managing, or holding single-family homes; and

(II) alone or in concert with 1 or more other entities, beginning after the date of enactment of this Act, directly or indirectly has investment control of not less than 350 single-family homes in the aggregate, not including any single-family home purchased in an excepted purchase made after the date of enactment of this Act; and

(ii) does not include any local, State, Tribal, or Federal government entity or instrumentality thereof.

(B) RULE OF CONSTRUCTION.—For purposes of this paragraph, an entity has direct or indirect investment control over a single-family home if the entity

(i) owns, or has primary authority or fiduciary responsibility to make material investment or management decisions relating to, the single-family home;

(ii) is, or directly or indirectly controls, the general partner or managing member of the entity that owns the single-family home;

(iii) is or controls the investment manager, management company, or investment advisor of the entity that owns the single-family home;

(iv) owns or controls more than 25 percent of any class of equity interests of the entity that owns the single-family home, unless such entity is a passive investor; or

(v) otherwise controls the entity that owns the single-family home.”

That part I bolded is really, really important. Usually, if you have any brains about it, you put any property you rent out in it’s own LLC. So if something goes wrong you can let that LLC die and your other business ventures are safe. The easiest way to get around a restriction on any single entity owning many properties is to make the employee who is a manager of those properties in the day to day dealing sense a Managing Member in the LLC officer sense. But this closes that loophole by counting homes owned by LLCs with employees of the owning company as LLC officers.

Now, there is always a loophole, but this is a shockingly competent closure of the usual ones. And directly goes against the claims of the many naysayers that claim “well, they’ll just stick them in LLCs like they always do anyways to get around this” and simply prove they have not read the bill.

At the very least the easiest loophole is to split your execs into corporations holding exactly how many houses is one less than the limitation. And then “split” the ownership shares so no company has a “controlling percentage” of shares in the other companies thereby refuting that they “control” the other companies. This will mean more corporations and therefor more corporate filings fees and probably more administrative employees since having an accountant at one work as an accountant at another ties them in a way that can be leveraged for legal action. Or they set up a “services” company that “contracts” to do the office and administrative work to the holding corporations and the only things kept in house are the things specifically required by the bill’s language.

Senate passes bipartisan housing bill targeting large investors and easing regulations

Positive Housing Data Under Threat from Iran Crisis

Today’s podcast discusses the recent positive housing data, but is it at risk due to the Iran Conflict?

Positive spring housing outlook at risk from escalating Iran war

For those who prefer YouTube, HousingWire has its own channel.

“The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.”Epictetus

Logan Mohtashami is a Lead Analyst for Housing Wire,…

Positive Housing Data Under Threat from Iran Crisis

The Secret Reason You Can’t Buy a House

Are Atlanta’s exurban counties becoming more expensive to live in?

A new analysis from the Wall Street Journal implies that the Atlanta region is fairly unique in becoming a harder place to find lower home prices in the exurbs – meaning the counties on the fringes like Jackson, Forsyth, and Cherokee. These are traditionally places where homes are much less expensive than in the “core” counties of a major metropolitan area.

https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/living-on-the-outskirts-of-atlanta-is-about-to-be-pricier-than-living-in-it-a2bd7c0d

Big caveat here: this analysis is *very* broad and lacks any nuance. It’s comparing the median price of homes across a large section of outer counties with that of homes in the middle counties. Within each of those two groups there is a *lot* of variation on either side of the median price. So the usefulness of the numbers is highly limited.

But I think it’s interesting to at least look at the trends in Atlanta, where median exurban prices are rising over the years, and the comparison to other metro areas’ medians.

From the article:

“The median sale price of homes in Atlanta’s exurbs was $380,962 in the fourth quarter of 2025, or about $4,000 shy of the prices in the neighboring metropolitan area and surrounding suburbs. That gap has narrowed from a high of $51,000 in the second quarter of 2021. If the trend continues at the current pace, sometime this year Atlanta will become the only major U.S. metropolitan area where exurban home prices exceed those of the accompanying city.”

“Atlanta’s population growth slowed in recent years after a higher cost of living and increased congestion made the city a less popular destination. In Fulton County, where the city is located, the population rose by 3.9% from 2019 to 2024, according to U.S. census data.”

Note that last section where the author decides that growth has slowed in Atlanta’s core counties because of higher costs and greater congestion in car traffic. Again, that’s a trend in the core metro and there is variation within neighborhoods.

Contrary to what some believe, for instance, there is not a series of empty new apartment buildings in the center city. People still want to move to the city.

Me and my boyfriend didn’t get the flat we applied for through an estate agents cos he wouldn’t let them have access to his bank statements online, gonna have to try my best to go down the council route but just for them to look at applications takes 16 weeks fml 😭😭

Housing Available!

During our weekly food distribution we discovered that many of our unhoused neighbors are veterans, who should not be sleeping on the cold freezing ground in Chicago!

Thanks to Rev. Dr. Lawrence Lenior and his connections, it’s now possible to help them. The owner of this establishment is coming soon on Monday Morning Mindfulness!

My book Bulldozed — Homeless Encampments and the Politics of Demolition examines the demolition of homeless encampments in the United States as part of a larger attack on urban informality. This work is based on more than ten years of ethnographic and archival research in the California Central Valley as well as analysis of secondary sources nationwide.
Thanks to a grant from the London School of Economics, the book will be available open access. See more here.

Romola Sanyal, my colleague at LSE geography, does excellent research on refugee livelihoods and urban displacement in South Asia and the Middle East (see more here). She recently interviewed me about my forthcoming book for her podcast Displacement Urbanism.

Vincent Lyon-Callo, who does incredible work on homelessness in the US, interviewed me recently for his new podcast Ending Homelessness. See more about his work here.