Why renters are still driving America’s building boom
As America's housing market slowly heals, good news is pouring in from homebuilders: They're building more; they're hiring more workers; they're building bigger houses.
Still, some things haven't changed: Renters (as opposed to buyers) are...
Providers of single-family rental homes are an important part of America’s housing ecosystem
President Biden’s release in May of a “Housing Supply Action Plan” represents a commendable effort to bring much needed quality, affordably-priced housing to communities throughout the country. In taking steps to “ease the burden...
The housing boom is already over. The housing shortage will continue.
As mortgage rates have risen this year, the buyer demand for homes has fallen. That has spelled trouble for the home construction business. Homebuilder confidence dropped for the tenth straight month in October. The...
What if they opened the office and nobody came?
For months, corporate hegemons, real estate brokers and their media acolytes have been insisted that a return to “normalcy,” that is, to the office, was imminent. Some companies threatened to reduce the incomes of...
The case for space
Personally, I’m a big fan of markets, but I’m not much of a city guy. I’ve lived in urban areas before, and to me the benefits just don’t outweigh the cost of the hustle...
Time-of-use rates sparks new debate about customer and grid impacts
Momentum is slowly building behind new rate designs that focus on customer costs and meeting system needs, but some say it’s too slow.
Pilot programs have shown smartly designed residential time-of-use (TOU) and other time...
A small landlord’s cry: Why is the government violating my property rights?
I am a small landlord, and the government has put me and millions of other small landlords through hell for the past 18 months. Politicians always say they support small business, but they rarely...
When the national population leads, the local population disappears
Not counting the District of Columbia with a population density of 11,535 people per square mile (p/mi2) while the smallest area in the country, the densest state by population is New Jersey with a...
LED lights the way to savings
The price for LED (light emitting diode) bulbs has plummeted more than 90 percent since 2008 and today’s bulbs use 70 to 90 percent less energy and last 15 times longer than the old...
HUD rallies smoking ban in public housing
In its proposed rule, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) would require more than 3,100 public housing agencies to go smoke-free within several years. The agencies must design policies prohibiting lit tobacco...
The kind of guys you’d want to work for. Says you.
Martin Luther King Jr. once said that “a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.” That is certainly the case of the 100 leaders of large companies around...
Market smarts
Good data lies at the heart of every successful operation, but data, in itself, is just the proverbial stack of lumber. Without an understanding, or a plan for construction, it has no context and...
I won’t hire people who use poor grammar. Here’s why.
Some might call my approach to grammar extreme, but I prefer Lynne Truss's more cuddly phraseology: I am a grammar "stickler." And, like Truss-author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves-I have a "zero tolerance approach"...
Three factors that could shape the fate of housing overhaul
But several developments unfolding right now could make the next five or six months among the more consequential periods for housing-finance policy since the companies were taken over by the government five years ago....
