Features
Where is the U.S. Housing Shortage?
U.S. home prices and rents are experiencing unprecedented growth this year. Although there are several reasons for this surge, the key cause is a prolonged housing supply shortage that has hit a...
Topic: Housing
Perspectives
Affordable Housing Discrimination in America
Housing Supply and Affordability was listed as the #6 issue in the 2021-22 Top Ten Issues Affecting Real Estate® by The Counselors of Real Estate®. When I wrote on this same topic a year ago, there...
Features
COVID-19 and the Single-Family Home Market: One City’s Experience
The Residential Real Estate Market and the Pandemic The first American COVID-19 case was reported on January 21, 2020, in Washington state. Although the media reported the growing threat of the virus...
Perspectives
General Liability Insurance & Crime Scores: Caution Advised for the Multifamily Property Industry
Many insurance carriers purchase third-party crime scores to further evaluate an insurance portfolio’s exposure to criminal risk.1 However, crime scores represent another hurdle for multifamily...
Features
Revisiting Residential Brokerage Fees in a More Technologically Advanced World
Introduction Anyone following the housing market understands that inventories of existing homes have continued to shrink, time on the market has never been faster, and often reasonably priced homes...
Perspectives
Seattle Housing: A Case Study in Crisis Creation
Kelly Lyles is a member of a dying breed: the mom-and-pop Seattle landlord. Her kind has become the target of an increasingly radical city council that has slammed the rental housing industry with a...
Features
Building Blocks of the Future
Our Story: How My Company Developed Modular Construction with Recycled Shipping Containers is Advancing Solutions to the Affordable Housing Crisis and Environmental Sustainability We constantly see...
Perspectives
America’s Sordid History of Exclusionary Zoning
In the summer of 1910, a successful Yale-educated attorney named George W.F. McMechen and his schoolteacher wife moved to an upscale neighborhood in Baltimore, Maryland. After all, McMechen had...
Perspectives
Affordable Housing: The Same Problems, Only Worse
Affordable Housing was listed as the #5 issue in the 2020-21 Top Ten Issues Affecting Real Estate® by The Counselors of Real Estate®. In this era of political divisiveness, there are two things...