The ‘haunted’ housing market’s real problem may be too few people, not too few homes, says J.P. Morgan’s David Kelly
Source: Fortune ·
Kelly estimates the U.S. now needs just 320,000 new homes a year, down from about 1 million, as immigration enforcement slows population growth.
From the source
“The housing market is haunted,” according to David Kelly, the chief global strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management. He lists the ghosts in his widely read Oct. 26 research note: more than a decade of too-easy money, tariffs, and immigration policies that raise the cost of building homes while limiting the number of people who need them, and a Fed whose rate swings hit housing harder than almost anything else. The one that should get the most attention is the people who aren’t showing up. Kelly said he expects U.S. population growth of just 800,000 a year over the next few years. With an average household of about 2.5 people, he writes, that “implies a demographic need for just 320,000 new housing units per year,” compared with roughly 1 million per year in the first two decades of this century. That cuts against the story most Americans have heard about housing: that the country simply hasn’t built enough. Zillow estimated in July the U.S. was about 4.7 million homes short as of…
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