Category: Demographics

Florida’s Population Dropping with its Home Prices

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on August 25

Florida’s population, which has been rising year after year since the end of World War II, fell for the first time this year, according to the demographers at the…

Harvard Highlights Housing Demographics

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on June 22

You don’t need an Ivy League degree to figure out the housing market stinks. Harvard University released its annual State of the Nation’s Housing report today. Among its conclusions: “Despite…

Latest Census Data Shows Winners and Losers

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on December 10

Newspapers and TV stations across the country have been having a field day with latest Census data. The bureau is reporting information every three years—rather than every ten. It…

Housing busts may lower household mobility

Posted by: Peter Coy on October 21

If you can’t sell, you can’t move. Makes sense, right? Now some economists have proven that in a housing bust, people with negative equity in their homes are about…

The Parking Problem

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on March 21

Hat’s off to my colleagues Michael Mandel and Peter Coy for their timely cover story on the monumental challenges and efforts by Fed chief Ben Bernanke to stave off…

Will the passing of the baby boom kill the housing market?

Posted by: Peter Coy on February 11

Check out this recent post over at Seeking Alpha predicting that the aging of the baby boom will kill the housing market. The gist is that boomers propelled the…

With Apologies to Harvard …

Posted by: Peter Coy on June 28

Yikes! Where are all the new families forming households? Housing bulls argue that the the underlying demand for housing is strong. The bullish Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard…

More Bedrooms; Fewer Heads on the Pillows

Posted by: Peter Coy on May 26

Why did so many Americans get overstretched in the housing boom? One reason is that they bought more house than they really needed. There’s evidence for that in a Census…

Moving Out of Michigan. Moving into North Carolina.

Posted by: Peter Coy on February 03

Jonathan Miller, the New York City appraiser who blogs at Matrix, has a good take on United Van Lines’ annual report on where its moving vans went in 2006. Here’s…

‘Creative Shrinkage’ in Youngstown

Posted by: Peter Coy on December 11

The population of Youngstown, Ohio, has fallen by more than half from its glory days as a steel city. Lots of buildings are empty. Instead of trying to grow, Youngstown…

The South and the West Will Go Grayer Faster

Posted by: Peter Coy on December 01

As boomers “age in place” and new ones move in, the Sun Belt and Western states will age much faster than the Rust Belt and the Plains states. That’s the…

An Index of Sprawl (Pittsburgh Is Worst)

Posted by: Peter Coy on May 11

You could argue that sprawl is a phony issue. After all, people have to live somewhere. And why should those ensconced in suburban and rural splendor be allowed to close…

Gen Y Goes House-Shopping

Posted by: Peter Coy on April 20

Once upon a time, when Baby Boomers were really babies, people thought of houses as places to live. How quaint. The modern conviction is that houses are actually … investments!…

After Mardi Gras: The Future of New Orleans

Posted by: Peter Coy on March 15

There’s a new estimate out today from RAND Corp. on how much the population of New Orleans will rebound and it’s none too pretty. By September 2008—three years after Katrina…

Why Are Young People Leaving Vermont?

Posted by: Peter Coy on March 08

My two sisters are part of the exodus of young people from Vermont that the New York Times covered recently (“Vermont Losing Prized Resource As Young Depart,” Mar. 4). I…

Slowdown in new households bodes ill for housing?

Posted by: Dean Foust on November 02

Sara Aronchick, an economist with Goldman, Sachs & Co., released an interesting report late Wednesday that takes on the notion—popular among housing bulls—that the housing boom can continue thanks to…

Housing Starts

Posted by: Dean Foust on August 29

I’ve cited from Merrill Lynch’s housing research on several occasions recently, and that’s because the folks there tend to regularly come up with a fresh take on what is a…