Gopal Ahluwalia, Kermit Baker, Kent Colton
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April 19, 2022
The 100 largest home builders in the US now account for about half of all new single-family home sales, up from just over a third two decades ago. However, according to “…
The amount spent by homeowners on improvements to their homes—remodels, replacements, additions, structural alterations, and other activities that increase the value of the…
I recently retired as Director of the Remodeling Futures Program at the Joint Center for Housing Studies, a position that I have been extremely fortunate to hold since its…
While the US economy shrank by 3.5 percent in 2020, spending on home improvements and repairs grew more than 3 percent, to nearly $420 billion, as households modified living…
During the pandemic, there has been a surge in do-it-yourself (DIY) home improvement as people have used some of their extra time at home to undertake projects that…
The economic pain we are experiencing in the wake of the pandemic calls for unprecedented government action to contain the fallout from a policy-induced economic coma. It…
After almost a decade of sustained growth in spending for home improvement projects, remodeling activity is likely to decline during the pandemic-induced economic downturn.…
Even though Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac returned to very-low down payment lending following the financial crisis, saving for a down payment remains one of the biggest barriers…
Michael Stegman, Richard Cooperstein
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October 9, 2019
Over the years, with the approval of their regulator/conservator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the GSEs) put in place an opaque…
Like cicada swarms, presidential commissions and federal initiatives to eliminate local barriers to housing development have a certain temporal cadence. By my accounting,…