Last week, we were told that the American middle class is losing ground, but we already knew that. And green buildings are in your future. This week? A Redfin survey suggests mortgage rates haven’t rattled buyers yet, our November Market Tracker hits inboxes, and don’t forget the Fed. Finally: Death Stars–too big to fail?
Are You Middle Class?
Fewer people are. In fact, as presidential candidates make their typical appeals to middle-class voters, they’re talking to a minority of the public for the first time in four decades, Pew Research Center reported last week. The non-partisan think tank also found that the U.S. middle class isn’t getting the lion’s share of income anymore, either.
The housing collapse bears a lot of the blame. Regular people who had their wealth tied up in their homes took a much bigger hit than families with money invested in a variety of places, like stocks. While the housing recovery is taking its time, the stock market has bounced right back, so those wealthier families did better, faster, after the Great Recession. But the problem of inequality is bigger than just home values.
“When all is said and done, upper-income families, which had three times as much wealth as middle-income families in 1983, had seven times as much in 2013,” Pew found. By now, this should be a familiar story.
Redfin customers are feeling it. Almost seven in 10 home buyers at the lowest end of the market ($250,000 or less) are worried about mortgage rates, according to a survey we took last month. That number falls steadily as price range rises. Stay tuned for more on this data, but the upshot is that impending rate hikes loom disproportionately larger on less-wealthy households.
Speaking of inequality. Angus Deaton accepted his Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics last week for discovering better ways to measure poverty, welfare and consumer spending. He isn’t a rock star like Thomas Piketty, but both are famous for their work showing the existence of, and damage caused by, the wealth gap.
Before trekking to Stockholm for his white-tie awards dinner, Deaton put out a report showing that less-educated white Americans are dying younger. Here’s a sobering overview from yet another economist who studies inequality.
Etc.
P.S. The Nobel memorial isn’t the same as the Nobel Prize, but it’s still a big deal.
More old news. The rent is too #$%@ high! Harvard said rents hit another record last year (when measured against incomes), even though new apartments are being built at their fastest pace in a generation. Vacancies are at their lowest since 1985.
Will the Fed raise rates? They’d better. As the folks at RBC Capital Markets put it, “the buildup to this hike has been excruciating.”
Excruciating how? It’s taken too long and it’s been too unpredictable. Now markets are volatile, investors looking for safe places to park cash, and corporate borrowing costs are going up, throwing shade on the economy.
What does the Fed have to do with my house? The Fed doesn’t control mortgage rates, which are still below 4 percent. But as the central bank makes short-term borrowing more expensive, long-term rates, like the 30-year mortgage, might be winners as investors look for shelter.
“This could translate into good news for people seeking mortgages,” Redfin Chief Economist Nela Richardson said.
Happy Buildings Day! Ok, it’s belated (Dec. 3), but the historic climate pact inked over the weekend reminded us to celebrate. Buildings have an oversized environmental footprint — almost a third of greenhouse gases come from construction, heating, cooling and maintenance. Increasingly, we’ll see more builders greening our homes.
Don’t worry, hipsters, cities aren’t the bad guys. New York might be the greenest city on the planet and it’s doing amazing things with data that could help others clean up their acts. Check out the WSJ 2050 project. Also, astrophysicists are cool.
May the Force be with us. If the Death Star cost $193 quintillion to build, and gross galactic product (GGP) was $4.6 sextillion, and Emperor Palpatine dies in the Battle of Endor, what would it cost the Rebel Alliance to bail out the galaxy’s financial system? This will be on the test.
Answer key. The bailout would cost between 15 percent and 20 percent of GGP. Comparing knobblypears to knobblypears, the U.S. bank rescue a few years back cost way less than 5 percent of gross domestic product.
Any questions? Lorraine.woellert@redfin.com
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