It’s a rough housing market out there, folks

Make Me Smart January 19, 2024 Transcript 

Note: Marketplace podcasts are meant to be heard, with emphasis, tone and audio elements a transcript can’t capture. Transcripts are generated using a combination of automated software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting it.

Kimberly Adams 

Everybody loves them some Amy Scott.

Amy Scott 

And some Kimberly Adams.

Kimberly Adams 

And this is how we have to start every Friday. This is the affirmation and love and affection. Hello everyone, I’m Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where we make today make sense. It is Friday, January the 19^th. Kai is out today, but joining me for Economics on Tap is the wonderful Amy Scott. Hey Amy.

Amy Scott 

Hey Kimberly. Hi everybody. Good to be back. As always, thank you for joining us on the podcast. And if you’re joining us on YouTube Livestream. Hello. It is Friday. And of course, that means it’s time for our weekly happy hour episode. I was ready for it.

Kimberly Adams 

Mm hmm. All right. So, we are going to get to some news, we’re going to take a break. But before we get to any, of course, play a round of Half Full/Half Empty. But before we get to any of that, I want to know what you’re drinking while I try to lure my cat onto the visible side of the bed with some treats.

Amy Scott 

Jasper needs to make an appearance. So, I was just complaining about how cold it is in this uninsulated closet where I record for Marketplace, so I made myself some hot cocoa because we have snow in Baltimore. Yay. After two years of almost no snow, it’s been super fun to look outside and see that beautiful white fluffy stuff. So yeah, peppermint hot cocoa. We’ll see if I did a good job stirring it. How about you, Kimberly?

Kimberly Adams 

Nice. Is the peppermint separate from the hot cocoa or did you like mix them together? Or was it flavor?

Amy Scott 

No, it’s like a powder. It’s like a premade. Yeah.

Kimberly Adams 

Oh, it is those ones that are kind of tall and skinny. Yes. I love those. Those are so good. I liked the raspberry one, too.

Amy Scott 

Oh, that sounds good. And I made it with milk, which really like is a treat. I have to say.

Kimberly Adams 

Oh wow. That would be a little risky on my end, but I’m glad you can enjoy it.

Amy Scott 

We’ll see for now.

Kimberly Adams 

See how well that microphone picks up. Anyway, I have made another mocktail. It has lemon ginger kombucha. Yeah, it’s got lemon ginger kombucha. This glass was made by one of our Make Me Smart listeners who sent one to Kai and I. Isn’t it pretty?

Amy Scott 

No way, that is so cool.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, it’s so nice. But anyway, it’s got lemon ginger kombucha. What I’d say, cranberry orange syrup, non-alcoholic tequila and then I garnished it, I don’t know if you can see, with some frozen cranberries. Just you know for fun.

Amy Scott 

That’s beautiful. Super classy.

Kimberly Adams 

I try. I try. So, I got my mocktail action happening. Alright, let’s see what everybody’s drinking in the chat. Longboard has a Lager from Hawaii. Sara Schlosser’s drinking bourbon. Terry Cusimano is drinking Warren G Double IPA from The Guild Brewing Company in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Represent. And Jennifer has a lemon drop martini. Louis Smith has a Negroni. Oh my goodness, so many things. Debbie Donovan asked us, does tequila what it needs to do in the mocktail? Yes, it does. Melissa McCarty has a rusty nail. Oh, I got feelings about that.

Amy Scott 

I can’t remember what’s in a rusty nail. It’s such a great name. It’s slightly scary.

Kimberly Adams 

It’s scotch. And Drambuie, and you know, I like a good cocktail. I made one of those suckers, and it made me cough and my eyes water. And you know, it takes something to do that to me. All right. What’s your news, Amy? Let’s do it.

Amy Scott 

Yeah well, I thought I’d do some housing news because I don’t know if you saw this item. The housing market hasn’t been this bad since the year the World Trade Organization was established, O.J. Simpson went on trial and Pixar released its first ever movie. I won’t make you guess. It was 1995, so almost 30 years. And this came from the National Association of Realtors, which said today that, “existing home sales fell by 1% in December from the previous month.” Not so bad. But for the year, sales are down across the country to the lowest level in almost 30 years since 1995. And of course, Bloomberg points out that back in 95, there were 74 million fewer people in this country. So that says something, and the median home price back then was about $115,000. In 2023, it was a record $389,800 which obviously is much higher even if you adjust for inflation. So, I mean it, the story is all about supply and demand, high interest rates, suppressing home sales, but already, but also keeping people who have a low mortgage rate in their homes and not selling, which suppresses the supply of houses for sale and therefore pushes up prices. So, this market remains pretty terrible. But the good news, I think, is that mortgage rates have actually been falling in the last couple of months. Freddie Mac said yesterday, the weekly average for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage is 6.6%, down from a high of near 8% in October, and most analysts expect rates to continue to fall at least a little bit this year, which hopefully will get more people to put their houses on the market, take some pressure off prices, but also, of course, makes home buying more affordable for those who want to get into the market.

Kimberly Adams 

You did say that there’s a lot more supply coming online though, right?

Amy Scott 

Well, there should be. There should be. Home builders are feeling optimistic. They’re building more homes, but we need by some estimates, like 4 million new homes, just to meet the current demand. So, it’s gonna take a long time to climb out of this. Fannie Mae, which is the other big mortgage finance company, said also this week that it’ll take years to get back to pre-pandemic sales levels because of all these, what economists like to call headwinds. Hmm. Okay, okay, well, that I recognize that sigh as like bummer, bummer. Okay, so I just want to say one more quick thing. I read a very interesting story in The Journal this week, about something called assumable mortgages, which is when you the buyer can assume the mortgage of the seller, at the low rate that they had. The Journal piece said it’s like traveling back in time. This isn’t an option for everyone, but I thought that was kind of cool if you are in the market.

Kimberly Adams 

Remember you and I were Slacking about this, like a year ago. When we were talking via Slack about why more people weren’t doing this. And I remember you did research on it at the time and were like, not many people can do it. We had a whole conversation about this.

Amy Scott 

Yeah, because you have to pay. You still have to pay the difference in the price and the value of the mortgage. So not everybody’s walking around with all that cash. But, you know, if you’re lucky enough to be able to pull that off, you can still get a three-point X percent mortgage rate. But for the rest of us, it’s much higher.

Kimberly Adams 

It’s kind of like owner financing, but slightly different.

Amy Scott 

Exactly, or seller financing. Yeah.

Kimberly Adams 

Yes, seller financing, that’s what I was thinking of. Cool. All right. Um, how about you? I have two, one is just sort of a follow up to what we were discussing, actually a follow up to a story we discussed earlier in the week about artificial intelligence, because I thought about something afterwards. And then lots of people commented in the Discord about it afterwards, and they’re all in fair point. Kai and I were talking about all of these AI layoffs and universal basic income. And this idea that, you know, we’re all going to have to sort of build our skills up in order to adapt to what’s coming, because it is coming. And we’ve got to figure out a way to survive, the coming, AI coming for our jobs, basically. Yes, and I didn’t mention it the other day, but I should have. That doesn’t mean I think all of this should be on the workers like there have to be some guardrails, there’s definitely going to need to be policy. There’s no way that the workforce is going to be able to adapt as quickly as this technology is coming online. So there’s still going to need to be some sort of policy, some sort of assist some sort of guardrails to buffer, the people who get shunted out of their jobs by technology that moves way faster than anybody else can, can adapt. And so yes, I think that too, but I also hope that there will be part of those changes, and those policies will be, you know, some training that hopefully is subsidized or available for people who are standing to lose out in this transition. So, then the other follow up that I wanted to talk about was on that tax deal that Kai and I discussed earlier in the week. It’s been in the news, and a lot of people were very skeptical when this deal dropped that had an extension of the child, or I guess, a reactivation of the changes to the child tax credit that were kicked in during the pandemic that helped a lot of kids raised a bunch of families out of poverty. So, this tax deal, brings back some of those components while also bringing back some business tax cuts that a lot of the folks in the GOP wanted, and it got a lot of pushback when it first landed because the Democrats thought it didn’t go far enough. The Republicans were kind of iffy on sort of getting anything done. That makes the administration look good. But it looks like it’s moving forward. It’s sort of passed its first big test. The Roll Call headline says, “Strong bipartisan showing in the first test of the tax deal’s support. the White House backed bill faces a time crunch with tax filing season set to begin. But the House Ways and Means Committee voted overwhelmingly Friday to approve a $78 billion tax package that would revive a trio of business tax incentives and expand the child tax credit.” It was a 40-3 vote. And that bodes very well for the passage of this thing, regardless of whether it’s a good or bad bill, because, you know, I’m not gonna weigh in on that. The fact that something was negotiated on a bipartisan basis. It was a hard fight. The fact that it’s actually getting done and moving forward, something moving through Congress, to me, is a good thing. And it’s nice to see that it’s possible. And pretty remark. I know, right? Yeah. Last thing very quickly, because I know that we need to get to our other fun stuff. I was reading about water on Mars. And I suppose, I liked space. I follow it pretty closely. But I didn’t quite recognize how much water was on Mars and that it was sort of already determined that there’s water on Mars, they were just trying to figure out how much and now there’s new research saying that there is a large water formation in one this particular in this one particular part of Mars that includes enough frozen water to fill the Red Sea. And so, this was the interesting part. “Over 15 years ago, Mars Express studied the Medusa Fossae Formation, MFF, revealing massive deposits up to 2.5 kilometers deep. From these early observations, it was unclear what the deposits were made of, but new research now has an answer.” They “found the deposits were even thicker than we thought.” This is a quote, “up to 3.7 kilometers thick,” says Thomas Watters of the Smithsonian Institution, U.S. lead author of both new research and the initial 2007 study. “Excitingly, the radar signals match what we would expect to see from layered ice, and are similar to the signals we see from Mars as polar caps, which we know to be very ice rich. If melted, the ice locked up in the MFF would cover the entire planet in a layer of water 1.5 to 2.7 meters deep: The most water ever found on this part of Mars and enough to fill the Earth’s Red Sea,” which I just thought was kind of cool.

Amy Scott 

It’s amazing. But I love how I read the article, and at one point, one of the scientists was like, well, it’s either water or dust. The distinction is pretty important. But now they’ve ruled out dust because it acts more like ice axe. Yet the way they figured that out, but can you imagine like showing up to Mars with your crew and you’re like there’s plenty of water here and oops, dust.

Kimberly Adams 

Make for a great adventure in a sci-fi novel.

Amy Scott 

Indeed, it’s probably already being written.

Kimberly Adams 

Oh, yes, I’m sure. Okay, well that is it for the news. We’re going to take a quick break and then when we return, we’re going to play around have Half Full/Half Empty and we will be right back. For what it’s worth, Jasper is still here. He’s just decided to nap on the other side of the bed.

Amy Scott 

Oh, Jasper not cooperating.

Kimberly Adams 

I know despite all the treats. Anyway, okay. It is time to play Half Full/Half Empty, hosted by the one, the only, Drew Jostad.

Drew Jostad 

All right. According to a restaurant research firm Technomic, 2024 is going to see a breakfast and brunch boom. Are you half full or half empty on restaurants going all in on breakfast?

Kimberly Adams 

I live in Washington DC. The brunch scene is very intense here. So, I don’t think I’m going to notice the difference. So, I’ll say half empty because, you only have to see, the last I was hanging out with a friend a couple of weeks ago. It’s cold out and we were sitting outside of a brunch place. And I literally saw two people have to be physically carried out of brunch because they went too hard on the bottles and I was just like, come on y’all. Let’s do better.

Amy Scott 

Kristin Schwab did a great story about this on Marketplace this week. I think maybe it was on yesterday. But she said there’s statistics showing more people drink alcohol at brunch than they do at dinner, which I found fascinating. I’m like, don’t they have anything to do afterwards? But you know, my brunch days are over.

Kimberly Adams 

When was last time you heard of a bottomless dinner?

Amy Scott 

Good point. That story is so interesting though it also showed that people are not eating as late as they used to, like the whole eating going out phenomenon has shifted earlier. So, restaurants are cashing in on this change and habits. I would say I’m half full because it, you know, as Kristen mentioned, things like eggs, potatoes, coffee, bread, those things are relatively cheap. And so, for a business to be able to make a pretty good profit, you know, serving up that stuff. I think it’s good for restaurants, which have been through such a rough couple of years. So even though I prefer to eat at home I’m half full on this.

Kimberly Adams 

Robert Bittner in the chat is saying half full if real brunch menus because I’m a two meal a day person. Yes, you need that. Good. If it’s a good brunch menu, I’m all for it. And Margie Kish says, I want to hear more fruits and veggies with breakfast. Okay, fair, fair.

Amy Scott 

I like it. All

Kimberly Adams

All right, what’s next?

Drew Jostad 

Last year also saw the women’s marathon world record and the Chicago Marathon record, both broken by runners wearing sneakers with carbon fiber plates. Are you half full or half empty on the “super shoes”?

Kimberly Adams 

Go ahead, Amy, you seem to have feelings.

Amy Scott 

Well, I don’t know. I’m torn about it. I mean, there’s been like debates over technology and every sport, right, like swimsuits that are more streamlined. And you know, I hadn’t heard about the shoe thing. But I think it’s cool when people push boundaries, and not with performance enhancing drugs. So, I guess I’ll say I’m half full.

Kimberly Adams 

I’ll go for half full, because I’m sure that this technology is also going to have some sort of other application that will be useful for humanity more broadly. I’m imagining that eventually, if the technology gets cheaper, people who have to spend their day on their feet, you know, maybe that will help them to be more comfortable in their shoes or something like that. This was a BBC story that our colleagues or colleagues over at the BBC did that ran on Marketplace Morning Report. And, you know, it says, “the soul is made of a thick foam fitted with carbon fiber plate, which is supposed to act as a catapult and give an extra boost to every step.” So maybe that will help people on their feet.

Amy Scott 

I could use a catapult just in my daily life. That sounds fun. It’s probably super expensive, but I want to try it. Yeah. I’m just so in awe of people who can run marathons, like whatever makes it a little easier for you.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah. I’ll go half full. Sure, why not? What’s next?

Drew Jostad 

Are you half full or half empty on using robots to mitigate loneliness?

Amy Scott 

That’s such a good story. Um, it is. You know what, I’m half full. If something helps. I mean, it can be a little creepy, obviously. But yeah, I mean, loneliness is a real epidemic. And if it works, it’s like fake it till you make it right.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, this was an AI powered robot called ElliQ. I listened to this interview that Lily Jamali did for Tech about this technology. And, you know, the sort of fine line you have to walk between, especially for older people, you know, giving and getting information that’s helpful without like, violating their autonomy. So like, if you notice them forgetting to take their meds, you know, ElliQ asking for permission, can I tell your daughter that, you know, you may need some help or something like that. I’m half full on the technology simply because the other option is people just being lonely. Right now, we don’t have enough caregivers. We don’t have enough people to check on our ageing population. And if it helps, I’m in favor but again, I hope there’s a lot of guardrails that go into this stuff.

Amy Scott 

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. For privacy, security.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah. I’m just having a paranoid like, imagining, you know, hackers getting into that and like preying on some older person.

Amy Scott 

My brain just went there. Yeah.

Kimberly Adams 

It’s like it’s bad enough as is but you know what, let’s be optimistic. Because Kai’s not here. We can be optimistic.

Amy Scott 

We’re on a roll right now, I think we’re mostly half full.

Kimberly Adams 

Yes, this is going be a good thing. Yes, let’s do it. What’s up, Drew? What’s next?

Drew Jostad 

A half full or half empty on the Mean Girls remake?

Amy Scott 

Darn it, I’m going to break my streak. Well, the caveat that I haven’t seen it, you know, so maybe it’s amazing. I’m half empty. I just like, why do we have to keep remaking these things that were kind of awesome in their own way at their own time? Even if they’re dated? It’s like, do we really have to make a new version for a new audience? Or can’t we just like watch things that were already created. In this case, by most of the same people?

Kimberly Adams 

Yes. I was listening to, I think it was Today Explained where they were talking about how we’re being tricked into watching musicals, and how these things like Mean Girls and The Color Purple and these other movies, they’re not being marketed as musicals, or even the Barbie movie to some extent, but they really have like some musical components. But because musicals have such a bad mo, they’re just like, oh, it’s just a movie. It’s just a show. Whatever. I’m going to abstain until I see it.

Amy Scott 

That’s another reason I’m half empty because I totally I never thought about it that way. But yes, it’s like, wait a minute. I didn’t think I was watching a musical. I’ve been bamboozled.

Kimberly Adams 

I love a good musical. I love a good musical. So, all right, is this the last one Drew?

Drew Jostad

Last one.

Kimberly Adams

All right, so those of you who are watching on YouTube or listening on YouTube, in the chat, please feel free to weigh in with your vote. And let’s go ahead with it.

Drew Jostad 

Are you half full or half empty on banning smartphones in schools?

Kimberly Adams 

Whoo, I’m going to let you, former education reporter, vamp on this one, especially since you’re the one with children.

Amy Scott 

Oh my gosh, should we wait till people have weighed in? I’m like, what can we, how can we stall?

Kimberly Adams 

How can we vamp on this and non-committedly really? Yeah. I really can see both sides of this issue. And I mean, not to be too dark about it, but especially in the era of school shootings and things like that. Yeah. And this week, we had that terrible, terrible Uvalde investigation come out, and with all the ways that the police department failed there. So, from that perspective, I definitely can appreciate why parents would want their kids to have their phones in the schools. And yet, there’s a lot of research showing how disruptive it is, and how it can contribute to bullying and, you know, bad self-body image among kids and things like that. Oh, it’s a tough one. What do you think?

Amy Scott 

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I feel all of those things. I think the research about social media in particular and its harm on children and teens is very compelling. And, you know, like, if you could have a phone that doesn’t access those things, but where you can reach your folks in an emergency, you know, maybe that’s the, the sweet spot. I do know a lot of teachers will collect the phones when the students come in, and you get in when you leave, and that cuts down at least on the disruption in class, which seems positive. Yeah.

Kimberly Adams 

Go ahead, go ahead. Well, I was going to say there’s a lot of interesting comments in the chat. Chip from Durham says teacher here fullish. Lots of people very full. And Nick says half full I wish I could ban them in my daily life as an adult. But I can’t. Then, let’s see. Edward Martinelli makes a good point; some students need them to monitor their blood sugar. So yes, with appropriate except exceptions. And then let’s see. Kevin Flanagan says it’s called a flip phone, Amy.

Amy Scott 

Yeah, you can still get them. There’s also something called the Wisephone that you know, it looks like a smartphone. It has a nice camera, and it doesn’t have social media apps. I’ve been looking at that. Full disclosure here, I will not let my kids have phones until they’re in eighth grade.

Kimberly Adams 

Oh, how did you land on that?

Amy Scott 

Well, you know, I think it was a trend for a while, wait until eighth and like a bunch of parents in in our kids school sort of made a pact, and then I think we’re the only ones that actually stuck with it. But that’s what we’ve stuck with. I can’t say that it’s like the best decision and I I think my kids probably get left out of some things, but I just didn’t want to be monitoring them at all times. And you know, just frankly don’t have time to help them be good users of a phone. So, I think it’s better to just not have one. And we’ll see how it goes when we open up that Pandora’s box. So, what did the poll results say?

Kimberly Adams 

Well, let’s shut it down and have a look at the final tally. Drumroll please. Looks like we’ve got 176 votes, with 72% being half full on banning smartphones in school. 27% half empty with 176 votes. I am going to go with the wisdom of the chat and say half full with appropriate ADA and other exceptions. That’s what I’m going to land on.

Amy Scott 

I like it. I’m going to say half full too, and I would say banning in the classroom is what I would suggest.

Kimberly Adams 

That’s a good point. To let people who need to monitor things do it like in between classes or things like that.

Amy Scott 

Like have a phone, you know, a sleeve where you put your phone when you walk in and you get it when you walk out. That way in an emergency, it is somewhat accessible.

Kimberly Adams 

Okay, I dig it. Nice one, Drew. Well, yes, thank you Drew. All right. That is it for us today. Kai and I will be back on Monday. In the meantime, if you have a question or a comment for us. You can leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-Smart or email us at makemesmart@marketplace.org. Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Today’s episode was engineered by Charlton Thorp, and our intern is Thalia Menchaca.

Amy Scott 

The team behind our Friday game is Emily Macune and Antoinette Brock. Marissa Cabrera is our senior producer. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcasts and Francesca Levy is the Executive Director of Digital and On-Demand.

Kimberly Adams 

Yes, and as they were saying in the chat, don’t forget to sign up for our Make Me Smart newsletter. Also, I did a little recap of my 40 skills for 40 adventure that I talked about in the show a bit a couple of weeks ago

Amy Scottt

Highly recommend.

Kimberly Adams

Super fun.