Steven Levy over at Wired recently wrote a short piece comparing Opendoor’s iBuying approach to what Zillow was doing when it was in the space. (Thank you Robert Wright for forwarding me the article.) As we have talked about before, the fundamental problem with Zillow’s… Read More
Here’s a cogent argument by Dror Poleg about how urban economics can be used to explain the evolution of Web3, and also why it’s all a bit of a ponzi scheme, but that when it works, it works. His argument revolves around ownership and participation.… Read More
If you’ve been following the housing market (in most cities) over the last year, this chart likely won’t surprise you. It is from a recent City Observatory article by Joe Cortright talking about the “k-shaped housing market” that we have seen emerge over the last… Read More
Across the 50 largest metro areas in the US, about 31.9% of millennials — those aged 18 to 34 — owned a home as of 2017. And according to recent census data (via the Redfin), only 5 of these cities had a millennial homeownership rate… Read More
The Government of Ontario is currently working on a Housing Supply Action Plan that they hope will address “the barriers getting in the way of new ownership and rental housing.” Through initial consultations, they have already identified 5 key themes (my words below): The approvals/entitlement process… Read More
The Urban Institute has a new study out that looks to explain why Millennial homeownership rates are lower than that of previous generations. The typical refrain is that Millennials have a lot more student debt and that the cost of housing in urban centers has… Read More
I just discovered an interesting new Seattle-based startup called Loftium. The way it works is that they provide down payment assistance (up to $50,000) to prospective homeowners as long as they commit to renting out one of the home’s bedrooms on Airbnb for 12 to… Read More
We have a cultural bias toward homeownership in this country. Other countries have it too. We believe that homeownership is what you should aspire to. In 2011, Statistics Canada pegged the homeownership rate at 69%. 9.2 million households out of a total of 13.3 million.… Read More
Yesterday Andreessen Horowitz announced an investment in the startup Point. They led an $8.4 million Series A round. Point is an alternative to traditional home equity loans and HELOCs. The way it works is that you actually sell a portion of your property. Here’s an example:… Read More
Charlie Gardner (aka the Old Urbanist) recently published an interesting pair of posts (here and here) about the decline of homeownership in the United States. What really stood out for me, though, was this chart (showing the percentage of household real estate equity): And this… Read More
BRANDON DONNELLY 