Why WFH Will Not Doom Cities

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Thomas Edsall of the New York Times recently wrote a piece in which he questioned several top academics in economics and real estate on whether two outcomes of the Covid pandemic  read more »

Home Building and Developing in The New Normal

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In a recent YouTube video Avoid These Cities (Housing Crash 2022) EPB Research provides an analysis of the national market. In general, West Coast is bad and East Coast is OK, especially the southeast. The overly regulated western states with higher raw land prices and huge city fees result in higher home prices.  read more »

Density and the Fertility Trap

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Yesterday, Tyler Cowan mentioned in the Marginal Revolution blog that he wished books on urban areas “would spend more time discussing whether dense urban areas are simply a fertility trap.”  read more »

A Working-Class 'Christmas Story' Christmas

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If you have an extra 10 million dollars lying around, little Ralphie Parker’s house from A Christmas Story (1983), is for sale. The iconic mustard colored house, located on the outskirts of Cleveland, is currently owned by Brian Jones, a superfan of the film.  read more »

Prisoners of Ideology

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The tendency to convert concrete issues into ideological problems, to invest them with moral color and high emotional charge, is to invite conflicts which can only damage a society.
~Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology, 1969  read more »

Subjects:

House Prices Falling At Last

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In recent weeks, more and more commentators are suggesting that house prices in New Zealand have started to fall, and are expected to fall further.

For many homeowners, especially those who have bought within the last year or two, this news will be terrifying, and for them I have a great deal of sympathy. They were sold the lie that house prices would always and everywhere rise much faster than incomes, and that therefore the best way to financial independence was to borrow to the maximum extent possible and buy a house – better still, several houses, the more the better.  read more »

Cities Have to Expand for House Prices to Fall

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The Ford government’s plan to expand the land supply available for housing has evoked the usual dog whistles about “urban sprawl” by interests apparently unaware of the strong connections between an organically expanding city, housing affordability and upward mobility.  read more »

France Bans Rail Competitors

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Supposedly, European high-speed trains are so successful that the airlines stop operating when new high-speed rail corridors open. The reality is much more dismal  read more »

The Rural Character of Canada's Metropolitan Areas (CMAs)

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There is considerable confusion with respect to the terms of urban geography, not only among the population in general, but also among the media, and sadly, among academics. Perhaps the greatest confusion is between the terms “metropolitan area” and “urban area.”  read more »

The Reparations Trap

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For today’s progressive left and its corporate backers, the past increasingly determines the future. At home and abroad, they seek to remedy historical guilt.  read more »