The Rental Vacancy vs Ownership Vacancy isn’t measuring occupancy of the same commodity. One is rental properties available for lease and the other is properties on the market for sale. The Ownership measure is skewed by all of the investor purchases of single family homes to convert them to rental properties in recent years…
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An excellent observation. 
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Those corporate purchased single family homes are now part of that available rental pool. Depending on whether the purchase was cash, or financing, makes a big difference in the asked lease price of the formerly owned by occupant home. A monthly note, without a tenant to cover it, is a significant drain on available income for the entity having to cover it. And people are belt tightening as things like available credit for monthly purchases drops for the average family…
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Absolutely.
The two number are measuring different things.
so we cannot simply add them to each other or whatever.
However, each shows a trend in vacant homes and those trends are in opposite directions.
One possible explanation:
- when the Fed drove up home prices families who (for any reason) own second homes etc. sold them etc… (Driving down the rate of ownership vacancy)
- However, the number of tenants did not increase as quickly, (Driving the rental vacancy rate up.)
Blue line below shows that we have more homes per capita than at any time in measured history (which goes backonly 25 years).
I see nothing incorrect in that post.
However out of “an abundance of caution” whenever I see phrases like “Those corporate purchased single family homes” I hasten to point out a few factoids that often get lost in poltical discussions.
First among those factoids is that “single family homes” does not mean “detached.”
High-rise condo and co-op buildings are comprised of “single family homes” so are suburban “garden apartments.”
Hundreds of single family homes.
Suburban single family homes
I’m referring to the ownership, not the form of the property. The urban multi home structure could contain a mix of individually owned units, occupied by the owner, and units owned by an individual, or entity, leased to the actual occupants. It is no different than suburban neighborhoods, made up of single family homes on single lots when it comes to ownership. Some are owned by occupant and some a rental properties.
Right.
And I have not seen anything in your posts I disagree with.
So far you appear to be 100% correct.
It is however usedufl to understand the context.
When a coporation owns a 10-story building with 40 total units that often comes up in the statistics as owning 40 single family homes (condos).
Ditto when they own a suburban townhouse complex.
It is easy for people to conflate those and think “corporations own a lot of detached homes in detached subdivisions.”
They are engaged in buying and managing those also. I also think that a lot of the rental game is owned by small business, rather than large corps, though there are several large groups, with deep pockets making an impact on the market.
Depends what denominator one uses.
large buyers own less than 1% of all homes nationwide.
(not very much)
but when the Fed went crazy reducing rtes and buying MBS
large corps were a large % of the buyers for that year or two. (like over 10% and I think I read 22%)
The big corporations bring a lot of overhead to manage nationwide properties. Real estate really is more of a local market game.
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smoke and mirrors
The US Money Supply grew 3.9% over the last year, the biggest YoY increase since July 2022.
After a brief hiatus, money printing is back. (h/t @charliebilello on twitter)
Interest rates went up, so the treasury had to borrow more to cover the debt service, plus a bunch of foreign aid to Ukraine. So the fed had to increase the money supply to cover buying the additional bonds from treasury to cover the spending.
The Fed did not --have to-- do anything.
It could have let the free market buy bonds at the fre market rate.
When the money supply increase either
1-- The Fed intervened in the free market. It printed money to buy bonds at rates the free market rejected, (Keynesian expansive)
or
2-- The Fed reduced the rate it pays for overnight holdings so less money was held overnight and more flowed into the credit market (hypothetically could be either, but in current context is also Keynesian expansive.)
(E7alr, I don’t know if we interacted on the “old boards” but I really enjoy your perspective and knowledge in these economic discussions)
The M0 declined over the period, as did the M1. That leaves a drop in reserves (as Bob pointed out), increased lending by banks (which is likely in a growing economy) and an increase in deposits/decrease in currency held (which seems unlikely?)
None of those equate to what I would consider money printing - I think of that as changes to the MB or M1.
The MB,
The M1 and
The M2 are already at hurricane emergency levels (very high.)
All of them are increasing,
Hmm let me be more specific: In each and every case the Fed has increased them even though the naturalfree-amrket tendency would be for them to decrease back to normal non-emergency levels. (equilibiroum, revert to mean etc.)
Wow - I take back my earlier statement. I quite literally incorrectly read the same FRED data you quote here. Bad math, too late to drink coffee…
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(This chart has a different size, a different time frame, etc.)
If I TRY to give the Fed some credit (you know I hate to do that, right),
I mean like, if I were assigned a debate topic and I were told
“Try to defend the Fed’s stupid and unconscionable actions. Pretend the fed is doing the right thing.”
I would produce the chart below and say
"See that red arrow? The Fed decided that red arrow is too steep and moved us to the orange arrow.
So yes it increased the money supply, but big picture, as of last July, the money supply is still dropping relative to GDP, just, at a slower rate."
.
.
.
Pardon me while I go wash my hands.
I suspect the fed did both. Lowering reserve requirements to juice the credit markets while also increasing money supply to keep the government from having to pay actual market rates to borrow.
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