Real Estate & Housing
The world's largest asset class: how rent, rates, and supply set a home's price; the American market near its record price with sales near a thirty-year low; the mortgage machine; the renters, rent rules, and the new federal limits on large investors; why there aren't enough homes and what the reforms did; the rich world's housing crises; China's bust, which has not found a bottom; commercial property after the office; property against the alternatives; and the insurance that now helps set what a house is worth. Written as of October 2026, with the thirty-year mortgage at 7.40% after the Federal Reserve's first rise since 2023 and before its October 27-28 meeting. Where the field argues, from whether Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should leave government control and whether supply limits explain high prices to whether a home is still a good investment and whether insurance prices should follow the risk, each side makes its case before the evidence. Opens with a market snapshot from one day's close, and its worked examples run on October's numbers, from what a mortgage rate does to what a household can buy to a zoning change, a Shanghai household's flat, owning against renting, and what an insurance premium does to a price.