The beat
Élise Tremblay covers housing and the wider economy for Wyre OpEd: mortgage rates and the spreads inside them, building codes, labour market data, and the energy economics under the AI build-out.
Housing on this beat is a supply story told through numbers that do not move: months of inventory flat for a year while everything around it changed, a staircase rule no other wealthy country writes into its code, a hundred and ten basis points of mortgage spread that no one in real estate produced and everyone in it is paid by. The macro essays are here for the same reason, since a jobs revision is a housing story one quarter later.
Essays
6 essays
- Four Point Six MonthsMonths of supply was 4.6 in July, in June, and in July a year ago. Affordability rose to 103.3 and rates hit a four-week low, and the number did not move.
- Cut The Price LastRedfin has buyers holding negotiating power and median payments down to $2,575 on seller cuts. Price is the costliest lever and rarely the broken one.
- Reduced To A StudyNo other wealthy country requires two exit stairs above three storeys, several have better fire outcomes, and the rule adds about ten percent to cost.
- The Jobs That Were Never ThereThe economy lost 23,000 jobs against 83,000 expected, then May and June were cut by 103,000. Unemployment fell only because the labour force shrank.
- 110 Basis PointsThe 30-year sat at 6.74 percent. At 2023 spread conditions and the same Treasury yield it would be 7.84. Nobody in real estate produced that difference.
- The Token Has a SmokestackOpenAI will spend $750 billion on infrastructure, data centres head for a fifth of US electricity, and grid prices near the buildout rose 76 percent.