YouSaid · the spoken record

Len Kiefer

lines on the record: 68
first: 2019-01-11
most recent: 2019-01-11
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I think it's an enormously complex field, and I think the ability to distill complex things, not make them extra complicated, but actually make them simpler is enormously important. And so when I started out, I was really focused on the complexity, because that's from an academic background where you go.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And sort of that sort of area. So, anything you can do to pick up some programming, I think, is incredibly important, in particular if you want to go in an analysis role, an understanding statistics if you're thinking about going into economics, more applied role, more applied statistics econometrics is hugely important.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, if they were an economist or even a financial analyst, which is a lot of the roles we actually work with some new hires in the company in different aspects. And so I do talk to some folks, or we have a rotational program where new college hires will come in and they'll rotate through different groups for about six months at a time. It's a great program where they can learn sort of what happens at Freddie Mac, what are different roles, accounting, finance, and sometimes they'll hang out with economists and work. When I talk to those folks and folks that are interested in going forward in the career, from my perspective, one of the best skills to have and to be able to sort of leverage is sort of quantitative sort of programming statistical analysis.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I like to do programming on the side, not economics, some of the stuff on the Twitter is actually just me sort of messing around playing, exploring ideas. I have two small children who have plenty of ideas for what I could be doing, but they know they're great fun. I mean, I have a blast hanging out with them and then trying to find some time with the family. I think that's really precious, especially as the kids are so young now and it doesn't last so long it flies by.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, as I mentioned, I think the data integrating this data and information, there are tons of information already collected that could be used either to help streamline the process of origination to lower costs. I mentioned origination costs have risen a lot. Could we unlock that and find ways to use information technology to streamline the processes? I think we're getting some traction on that, but I think that, and then tapping that information to effectively understand credit risk, to understand where the market may be headed, I think is enormously important.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, and then doing that for a long time until finally, as I mentioned, Dave at Friday gave me a chance with some resistance, I think, internally. They were skeptical in the group. I think I won them over eventually. But, you know, sort of how I would turn out. And so I think that sort of experience gave me a little bit of edge to think about, okay, maybe I could be unemployed again. So how would I keep myself competitive? How do I keep myself sort of avoiding that idleness for a longer time?”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. So when I came from left Texas and came to the Washington DC area, I was unemployed for about 15 months between sort of my professor job and getting hired on at Freddy. There was a lot of times where I was sort of looking for a job. Now, it didn't help that was in 2008 and 9 when the economy was in a very tough spot and finance was sort of particularly an industry that was in a lot of distress. But it had a hard time. I was coming from an academic background. There weren't academic jobs. I was trying to transition into industry and really just sort of not matching up, not able to communicate clearly to the potential jobs I think I would have been able to do a lot of jobs, but the opportunities were tough. It was very competitive. And so continuously sort of coming up short”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which I think we're a little slow, I think, in some of those areas, but there's a lot of exciting work in that dimension. And I think it is only going to grow in ways we cannot even imagine today.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so the housing market overall, I mean, I think there's the potential we talked a lot about demand. If I think about it from an economist shop or an industry shop, I think there's a huge amount of data and information that we are just at the beginning of. You think about big data, the type of information that is becoming available or is available that has not yet been fully tapped in mind. I think that is a huge area of growth. It's an area of focus at the firm, an area of focus for myself from machine learning data analysis, programming, how to deal with that information, how to consume it, how to think about it, the economics profession is starting to come to grips with how do you model that.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because they know a lot and they can't have a hard time empathizing with folks who don't. And so keeping that in mind and having that empathy, I think, is key to becoming a better communicator. And so I really enjoy that exposition and other stuff in that book is great too.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, for fun, but it has been helpful. There's a book by Stephen Pinker called Sense of Style. Which is because a lot of what I do is communicate. And one of the sort of areas that I'm really focused on and thinking about a lot is how can I be a better presenter? How can I be a better communicator? How can I be a better writer? And in that book, there's a lot of great stuff there, but one part in particular that I think applies to economists. I share it with my team when we talk about how can we communicate to our business partners, the general audience, is this idea of the curse of knowledge. Of where, when you as an expert know something, you have difficulty imagining what it's like not to know that. And so a lot of why do academics write terrible was.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know how you separate the economics from the fiction because that can back to the hold on write that down. That certainly can be a challenge. But actually, I think one book I think is really important that I really appreciate and I come back to constantly is a book called The Visual Display of Quantitative Information from Edward Tufte, who is a UL professor on data visualization. You mentioned my charts, sort of my sort of beginning to come to put those together was attending one of his, he does seminars and reading his books and really was an eye-opener for thinking about how can we as a data analyst, scientist, think.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About how things went. And so that really, I think, provided a lot of valuable insights into how sort of folks are thinking and even today how they're thinking because I can ask him what he's seeing.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so there are a lot of folks at Freddie who sort of have a lot of expertise about capital markets and that execution. You know, as the economist, sometimes some exposure to that, but I really got a lot of information from that from our former chief economist. Sean Baketti, who's moved back to the capital markets side. And so he sort of had a lot of perspective and information on sort of how sort of the capital markets guys are thinking. You know, he'd worked on the street. So how does, you know, street investors think about stuff, which as, you know, from a pure economics background, I didn't have that same perspective, had a lot of great stories.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Business people are thinking as an economist, he's an economist too, and so I still see him at lunch sometimes, and I always have a great conversation whenever I see him.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, there are two that I would come to mind that I think are particularly important. If I look at my sort of graduate training at Ohio State, Bill Duport was my advisor, my thesis advisor, sort of really helped train me and sort of understanding and thinking like an economist to bring sort of a macroeconomic perspective and understand sort of the models and approaches that economists use. That was very important sort of forming sort of my thinking as an economist. But then very important was when I started at Freddie Mac, because we talked a little bit about sort of transition to industry. Now here I was this guy. I had come to the market. I didn't have a lot of industry experience. I had some kind of theoretical stuff. So my first hiring, a guy who hired me at Freddie Mac, a guy named Dave Rada, who's still there in a different role, but was really helpful in getting me sort of to transition to industry to help understand sort of think through sort of how the industry is working, how to...”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think now people who know me personally will know this, but in general, sort of in public, they may not realize this is that I'm probably the second best economist in my household. When I come home, my wife, she's also an economist. She works actually around housing-related issues. Credit risk and things like that. She's a real expert on that. And so when I come home, I have great discussions at work, but I can have other discussions at home talking about statistics, econometrics, things like that. It's a real exciting talk there at home. This is dinner table conversation. Dinner table conversation. That, I think, is really, I kind of, I think of it as a superpower because it's really, you know, gives me sort of a real rich, I think, perspective on things because she's also very clear to tell me sort of when things are kind of nonsense or I'm not making a lot of sense. So she has that perspective, which is great.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the major difference is just the depths to which housing construction fell off. And so the fact that we built so few units for so long helped to correct for some overbuilding in certain markets last decade and then even more so. And so that, I think, creates a little bit different in terms of the sensitivity because you have not only that lack of building, but you also have this tremendous demographic tailwind from the millennial generation who are really hitting those peak home buying years right around now. We're actually a couple years later. That's why I'm still optimistic about the next couple of years because the median age of a first-time homebuyer is about 31. I think the median age of millennials is 28, 29. So you still got a couple years of really till that peak demand really starts hitting the housing market. And so that, I think, has helped the overall market remain robust despite higher interest rates and very rapid home price growth in a lot of markets.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you know, I think one of the important things is getting investors confident about sort of the data, confident about the housing market. One of the things I did recently was travel and spoke with two investors in that marketplace, spoke at different events to help folks sort of understand better sort of how the housing market looks, how do you think about that, how would you understand historical data? All of that, I think that's where communication and getting that data and information out there is fundamentally important so you have more transparency, folks can analyze that data, they can look at it, they can build their own models, that's going to create a better confidence in the marketplace and sort of the willingness to take on that investment.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I absolutely think it has to be the credit risk transfer because that's really changed the model for secondary market financing. You've taken a tremendous amount of credit risk that was concentrated and Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and now you have distributed broadly which I think has the potential to really reduce overall risk and the overall housing or finance system by creating diversification. And so that getting investors comfortable with that, getting them to actually take on that and invest in those securities. There's been very brisk demand for those, I think has really, I think, changed fundamentally sort of how the US housing finance system operates. and how it will go look going forward.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you ask, sort of for a full year 2017, the U.S. added about 1.25 million units, which is up from every year since 2008. However, if you compare that number against all of the years prior to 2008, only one year, one single year, did the U.S. add fewer overall homes, apartments, and manufactured homes. And that was 1982 when mortgage interest rates had spiked, the Fed was trying to kill off inflation, and folks were really struggling in that year. So 2017, which is the best year in all about a decade, comparable to 1982 in terms of the overall level of building, there's some room for improvement there.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you mentioned some of the charts that I share on Twitter. One of my favorite recent ones because it was striking to me when I put this together was to look at the housing supply. So you add up single family homes, apartments, manufactured home shipments in the United States, which the census has tracked that since 1968.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think you're starting to see a very beginning. The data isn't all there. Yeah, we sort of have to see, but I think you're seeing some leveling off for sure. There isn't so much as a movement as we saw back in the early crisis years, 2010. There was a big shift of single family homes, for example, from ownership to rentership. Some of that has remained in rentership. But you're seeing home ownership break up a little bit. We may continue to see some uptrend there and some shifting of those homes, but not in any big way in any data that I've seen.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Providing funding for the multifamily market. If you look at sort of how, where does the funding for multifamily apartments come from? You can look at life insurance companies, banks, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Freddie, I think was the largest single source of funding in that marketplace in certain recent years. And so that's been a large and growing business. Now compared to our single family business, it's relatively small just because the single family business is a lot larger in terms of the overall sort of mortgage finance for the United States.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's absolutely been growing. I think Freddie has been the largest supplier of multifamily financing in the overall marketplace in recent years.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, well, I think there are different components, but I think one of the important innovations that was made was the credit risk transfer. We talked a little bit about that, about selling to investors the credit risk actually started in our multifamily division. They were ahead of the single family in terms of placing those mortgages into securities. I believe it was around 2009. We started what we call our K deals, which were those multi-K deals. That's just the name of the security that securitizes multifamily loans and sells that credit risk to investors.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Several decades out in terms of where the boomers are in general. And so I think that's going to boost overall demand. In fact, I'm an economist in our department have looked at that and it's going to have a very large effect on sort of taking supply that would otherwise be available for millennials out of the market. And that's why I believe housing markets still needs to build more units to supply the population.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You may, although I think that's a little bit later out because the boomers as a generation, some of them are still, I think, the youngest are still in their 50s, so they still have, I think, the active lifestyle is more like, if you look at the amenities, for example, folks, economists have surveyed sort of folks in that 55 plus generation. What are they looking for in terms of housing? Very similar to the basket of sort of amenities that millennials want with the sole exception. They're not looking so much for playgrounds. But overall, they're looking for the same basket and they are, broadly speaking, much healthier. And so they're sort of not moving assisted living and that sort of that end of life in his generation is more.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's absolutely the case, although I think we have to a little bit of caution, right? Back in the 80s or 90s, some economists wrote sort of looked at the housing market and were suggesting, oh, the housing market is going to crash in the 90s. And they were basing that off of historical demographic trends. But what they didn't account for was the fact that people were living longer and healthier lives. And so one of the key things we've seen is that the boomer generation has been the healthiest generation. They are living longer. They're intending to live longer. And so you're not going to necessarily see the same fall off in or supply coming online from boomers moving to out of home ownership or out of their apartments. That's probably not going to happen or it'll happen later.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I think that's an important part of sort of the American economic life. I think homeownership is not for everyone. Everyone doesn't need to have that, but a lot of people aspire to that. And so making that possible, I think in a responsible way is an important thing to do. But sort of a particular target or number or something like that. I don't think that's the way to think about it. It's really to think about is the economy sort of providing the opportunity for folks who have good credit, who should qualify for a mortgage, are they able to get sort of mortgage credit and financing?”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But they were really focused on this analysis was saying, oh, could the homeownership rate drop to levels that we haven't seen since the 1950s? And so we took that up and did some analysis to try and see and look at that and say, that doesn't seem the case. I mean, it's unlikely that the United States is going to see a home ownership rate back around 69% given sort of demographics and other forces. But I think there's some upward momentum because we've got an aging population that tends to have home ownership and the populations that may have traditionally had lower home ownership rates may see that tick up modestly”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you know, a couple of years ago, HUD, housing and urban development, they put together a publication, invited some researchers to write on the provocative title, Could the Home Ownership Rate in the United States fall below 50%? That's so around 60%.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can answer that, Barry. I mean, one of the things I try to do, and I think it's important, is to not overspecify what my expertise is. So I'm focused on the housing and mortgage market, the economy, the economics of that, the policy stuff. That's really other groups. If they need an economist to talk about what might be the economic implications, I might do analysis, but a lot of that is sort of not my area. And so I try to stay in my lane and focus on the economy or what the mortgage market is doing. Totally fair. We understand that.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think one of the key factors is that cost pressures in the mortgage origination space have risen a lot with the increased compliance costs, but also other costs, just the cost to originate a mortgage has increased quite a lot. And so you're seeing that there's quite a bit of consolidation in the mortgage space. And I think that may continue as some of the smallest players may find that it's more economical for them to either merge. But in general, sort of, that's one of the areas where I think Freddie Matt can offer some help in the sense of trying to help provide technology and tools that can help make the mortgage origination and then selling that into the secondary market easier can help relieve some of that cost pressure, I think is fundamentally important things we've already been doing but are continuing to focus on that I think will ultimately help provide you know”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think so. There is a challenge. If rates continue, mortgage interest rates continue to rise. I think that will slow the growth, but there's still, I think, enough headroom that you could have modest growth over the next couple years in terms of home sales. I think housing construction has a lot of room for improvement to match demand. You'll probably will see home price growth moderate just because from an affordability perspective and as we get some more supply online, that'll help moderate the price growth. But I still think we're going to see a pretty good housing market over the next couple of years if the economy sort of stays on track.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So they are showing up in the marketplace. They're showing up as renters. They're showing up as home buyers. But they still got a lot of ground to make up as a group. And so teasing out how much of that is just aging and how much of that is actual catching up is part of sort of the challenge and what economists like me can help sort of provide some analysis on. And so we're seeing that. But if you think about the future of the U.S. housing market, I'm fundamentally optimistic. And the reason why is because we have a large amount of pen-up demand. And if the economy stays relatively strong, we should continue to see that demand showing up over the next few years.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Linger because you get behind in the job market, you take a you come in at a lower salary, and that may have a permanent effect, but you are healing. Labor market is heating up. We're seeing a lot of job growth, and we are seeing, even within our own data, upward trends of first-time homebuyers.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think so. I mean, we're seeing that. Part of it is sort of you have a shock and is it permanent? And if you look at life cycle evidence, unfortunately, some of the evidence economists have looked at it suggests that these effects are long-lasting”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. In fact, one of the things we looked at was well, what about household formation? Because there's been a lot of trend of young adults doubling up. They live with roommates or nonpartners, parents' basement as well. I mean, it's huge numbers, percentages might seem small, but you add up the numbers as millions of people. In fact, we estimated that about, if you look at the 25 to 34 year old population, there's about 1.6 million fewer households than what you would have if we were living in an economic environment like the early 2000s.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, there are two things that we've sort of looked at at that. One is for a lot of the young adults in this country, these rising housing costs are a real challenge. You know, if you're a homeowner and home prices go up a lot, well, you get a lot of equity. But if you're a new potential first-time buyer or renter, even higher housing costs are really just make it tougher already for a generation that's had, I think, a pretty tough economic environment.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On fire Seattle, Las Vegas, in fact, very, very strong house price growth there, whereas you go to parts of the Midwest and Northeast, much more moderate house price growth.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. You know, we spent a lot of time thinking about home prices and what the trends are because I think it tells you a lot about what's happening. Not everything, but it tells you a lot. And if you look at sort of the national home prices have been rising somewhere around 6%, depending on the particular index, but a lot of them are showing a similar trend of around 6% nationally. But you go to the subnational level, you go to certain metro areas, it's easily double that.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely, the lack of labor is a key challenge, and part of the challenge is also the skilled labor that's available in the construction industry is also facing competing demands in terms of remodeling. We got a lot of boomers. We've looked at sort of the housing stock as it is relative to the needs of a lot of seniors who are looking to age in place. And they need to do remodeling to their house to make it sort of conform to what they're going to need. And that sort of competes away limited construction workers as well, because that's a relatively low productivity area. And so that means you need more workers to do more, a similar amount. And so that puts, again, more pressure, but across the board, home builders are having a hard time finding work, the skilled labor in particular that they need to match and ramp up production.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are things, and there's things, in fact, Freddie Mac has been looking at in particular part of a small component, but important component is around manufactured housing, which in a lot of places, a lot of rural areas, that can be a very affordable product. And so finding ways to finance that is, I think, an important contribution. Although in aggregate, that's going to be marginal. But you got to start adding up marginal things because I think there's no national policy, I think, that can fix it on the supply side. A lot of it has to do with local zoning or a lack of labor. And so that, I think, we're seeing overall economy is. Shortages of labor across the board”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's what I believe. Now, there's a little bit to unpack there because if you took all the housing units in the country and we matched up all the people, there might be a little bit of balance. And what the challenge is that a lot of the housing units that are currently available are in places where there's not a lot of jobs. Right. And so the fact that you have sort of a lot of housing in parts of the Midwest and Northeast that are seeing population decline. Doesn't really help out when you have hot housing markets, places like California or in Texas and some places building is ramping up, but it's still struggling to match. And so you're seeing that real pressure there pushing up home prices.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Housing, not just homes, it's also apartments, just overall housing in the United States after a decade of slow building is still way below what we need. In fact, some research my team is working on is to calculate just how far we are in aggregate short of what we need. So there's a big imbalance in the housing market between supply and demand. The United States is just building too few housing units relative to what our growing population needs. It's not just single family homes, it's also apartments. And you see that in the rental market as well. So home prices and rents rising above income has been doing that for several years. And that is creating a lot of pressure in housing markets that's driving, I think, the primary factor that's driving higher home prices.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm an economist, so I got to say everything, but in the current environment, I mean, what I believe in many other housing economists also believe is that the real challenge in the current marketplace is a big imbalance between housing demand and housing supply. There's just not enough”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We have been seeing home sales, for example, increase year after year. We had the best year in a decade in 2017. And when we started the year, we were forecasting to see a modest increase in overall home sales in 2018. Rates rose, and that has, I think, cooled activity a little bit. Definitely there is some momentum stalled a little bit in the summer of 2018. I think a lot of that had to do with the impact of rates because the broader economy is doing very well. The employment market is very good. A lot of job growth. We're seeing incomes pick up. Confidence is high. The real two things are impeding, sort of the overall housing market it's high home prices And then high interest rates, which both make it difficult for potential buyers.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We've benefited, I think, from low mortgage interest rates, but one of the challenges is, you know, you think about where the marketplace is today, and a lot of buyers are showing up for first-time buyers. We're in high school, perhaps, or college when that was going on. They were mandoor. They don't remember for them a mortgage even a 4% is relatively high. And five, you know, I mentioned we work on the survey. We have some staff that help us, junior staff that are relatively young. I'm afraid we're going to get a 5% mortgage rate we may have. And they're going to ask me, is this some data error? Is this even possible? And so yes, from a historic perspective, long run, rates are very low. In the relative to recent years, a little bit higher.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is from a historical perspective. I mentioned we work on what we call the primary mortgage market survey. It's our weekly mortgage rate survey that attracts what's the 30-year fixed rate mortgage on average across the country. We've been doing it since 71.”
2019-01-11 · Masters in Business · Len Kiefer Discusses the Housing and Mortgage Markets (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source