At Zillow Research, our days are fully consumed with bringing you the best, most interesting and most actionable real estate research around.
But to that end, we also find time to read a variety of reports, news stories and investigations, on any number of issues, from social justice, to economics, to real estate and sports. We read them for education, for entertainment and out of pure curiosity – and each one helps us discover new questions we want to answer and helps identify new trends worth following.
Zillow Reading List is a regular roundup of these interesting pieces we come across, with some thoughts about each and how it ties into our existing research and/or has spurred new questions. We’ll post these roundups regularly, and of course will continue to strive to publish research that is as enriching, thought-provoking and useful as these pieces have been to us.
Enjoy!
Foreclosed Homeowners Getting Out of the Penalty Box
Annamaria Andriotis, Laura Kusisto and Joe Light in The Wall Street Journal
For those homeowners foreclosed upon at the beginning of the housing crisis, the black marks on their credit are starting to disappear as the seven-year waiting periods to qualify for a new loan imposed after foreclosure begin to expire. In some cases, this could mean that while their former neighbors who continued to make payments might be stuck underwater, those who mailed in their keys may now qualify to buy a new home. Already burned once, they are likely to be wary about jumping into a new loan – but now might be a great time for some of them to buy, with rates low and credit access easing.
Housing Prices – The Global Experience
In The Economist
This fantastic visualization really puts the U.S. housing market experience in context. Think the last 20 years have been a roller coaster ride? Be glad you don’t live in Ireland. And if worries of a new bubble keep you up at night, we wouldn’t suggest moving to Britain, where prices relative to rents are at twice their 1993 level. And China? We were surprised to learn that home prices relative to income have been on a steady and dramatic decline there for the past 15 years.
David Cay Johnston in Newsweek
The rising prevalence of luxury condos bought by wealthy foreigners, but sitting empty for most of the year, is a phenomenon that many global cities are struggling with. On the one hand, they are a source of tax revenue. On the other, rising prices threaten to make homes in some of these communities unaffordable for locals, and might undermine the very character of a neighborhood that made it appealing in the first place. And while recent currency movements are likely to take a bite out of foreign purchases of U.S. homes in the short-term, this remains a long-term issue that needs attention.
Anthony Fisher in the Observer
We strongly agree that there are hidden costs behind nostalgia-driven housing policies and the desire to preserve the ‘real’ New York. Neighborhood character matters, in a way that is often overlooked by economists. But policies aimed at preserving neighborhood characteristics, however well-meaning, can have far-ranging consequences for housing markets. This is especially true when taken in combination with sometimes dozens of other other well-intentioned policy decisions – what we have come to term ‘the tyranny of small decisions.’
Peter Mateyka in Household Economic Studies
A detailed, data-driven look at how and why people decide to move. Our research shows that more than 5 million renters are looking to move and buy a place – but will they? According to this study, some will but most might not. Historically, only about 18 percent of those households indicating they want to move actually do. Interestingly, this report also highlights an increasing number of people who report being satisfied with their current living situation. This could be driven by better sorting of households into residences, or perhaps a diminished sense that the grass actually is greener on the other side.
