Resolves based on the CSUSHPINSA (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/csushpinsa).
Will it decline at least 15% from its peak of 308.47 at any time before the end of 2023?
Resolves YES as soon as the index is below 262.20 for any month in 2022 or 2023. NO if December 2023 is released and this condition has not been met.
Based on a prediction from https://www.themotte.org/post/133/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/20455?context=8#context
1,000🏅 Top traders
| # | Name | Total profit |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ṁ392 | |
| 2 | Ṁ92 | |
| 3 | Ṁ80 | |
| 4 | Ṁ65 | |
| 5 | Ṁ62 |
@mods resolves NO; Dec 2023 is out and all values are above 262.20
(shown: data for 2022-23 shifted down by 262.20)
Was driving past an outer suburb on the outskirts of a large suburb in Minneapolis, Minnesota area (the city is called Woodbury), yesterday, and noticed an entire massive 40+ acre development zone with a sign that said, "Distinguished Rental Living." Basically, it's a build-to-rent development. American housing is completely transforming because only a certain income and asset group can actually afford housing. Hence, new homes that are being built are not necessarily for sale, which creates a different baseline for the supply of available homes compared to previous decades where one would have expected a crash to happen. Basically instead of the supply of new homes for sale going up, as in past decades, we are seeing new rental units, which notably do not go on the market. What would need to happen for all of these rental units being built to go on the market would be for a massive number of these corporations to fail, or some huge regulatory change would need to happen, which will take a while.
So where does that leave us? Basically a limited supply of housing for actual sale, with still a relatively high number of buyers.
What happens in 2024, 2025, or beyond could potentially get really ugly as people stop having kids, or as these built to rent developments go under because people don't keep up on their rent, and then they become housing projects like in the 1970s, creating a spiraling oversupply at some point...but that will take a long time.
262 would represent a -11% decline from today's index value of 293, which is a bigger drop than the one predicted by even the most bearish of the nine research firms in this forecast roundup (https://fortune.com/2023/05/10/housing-market-home-price-predictions/). The other eight firms are even farther from expecting such a huge crash! So, as much as this Georgist/Yimby/soon-to-be-first-time-homebuyer would love it if your scenario came true, I am thinking that such a dramatic crash is very unlikely this year.
Betting further no. Tons of people have locked in super low interest rates for many years, so they can manage their payments. Tons of people want to buy housing as holding out on renting is not an option as they grow and form families, so they will buy whatever slightly larger space that they can. There's also the corporate ownership part of the equation, as crowdsourcing for home ownership is now a thing, which was not in 2008. There would need to be a massive number of people with either variable rates as in 2008 or some known reason for a crash. As bad as the economy gets, there will not be a major crash as the supply is just so low and the need is too high. There may be regional crashes but it will average out.
