Eric Finnigan

$100K fee on new H-1B applications = gone for now Should be good news for large homebuilders, especially if it stays dead. We heard the fee announcement immediately froze new home sales in some parts of the US.

My estimate is closer to 1 million but in places like NYC, Chicago, LA, SF and at prices people can pay. Add 5 million vacant homes would mean 15 out of 100 homes left empty. Do that and homebuilding capital would exit en masse (again). Slide from my NMHC deck. Vacancy is pretty close to normal!

"Most things don't exist. The Ford Motor Company hardly exists. It's just a time-saving expression for a collection of financial interests."

WSJ rightly (if not sadly) calls Denver "America's Emptiest Downtown". Migration patterns tell the story: in-migration fell dramatically after 2020.

Making legal immigrants who want green cards leave US for 1-3+ yrs could hit hardest in states with the most people and fastest growth. The map shows areas of maximum impact - CA, NY, FL, TX, NV, AZ (New policy doesn't affect *all* immigrants, so %s overstate impact in each state)

Working hypothesis: Japan's housing market looks ~25 years ahead of the US. Japan's population peaked in 2010. (Ours probably peaks in the 2030s.) Abandoned homes are piling up in smaller cities. Yet housing stock is still expanding are prices are up >10% YOY in high demand areas (ex: Tokyo).

Literally he said Xi said

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Wonk alert. The traditional homeownership rate (% of householders that own) misses that householder rates tanked after 2010. Homeownership (measured by population) is near historic lows for those of us under 70.

Jurassic Parking Lot

Same but household formation. We're missing about ~700K Gen Z households today because they're moving out of mom & dad's later. They'll move out and form new households, just later. We're gonna be OK.

We've been calling out the statewide Florida demographic slowdown to clients for the past year+. I was talking with a homebuilder in Nashville last week. They're seeing fewer California transplants but more buyers from Florida. Go figure.

What does drawn-out economic decline look like? Here's Main & Main in Jordan, NY, near the old Erie Canal Lock 59, also where I grew up. A typical grey spring day. It peaked in 1860, but population began falling as railroads replaced the canal as the main NYC shipping route. (Those are horses.)

How old is the first-time homebuyer? Turns out, the best answer is probably, "Mid-/late 30s" and "a bit older than in 2010."

$0.28 → $0.07 as Supreme Court hears arguments for/against birthright citizenship ban

Other than a flurry of articles recently, what's going on here? Supreme Court session hasn't even started yet. Is it a liquidity thing? Volume is $232K.

Weird proof of my own personal AI productivity boom, booking travel feels way more annoying now. Thinking about what I can do with an AI-assisted hour today vs. 1 hour planning routes, booking flights/hotels/etc. for a multi-city trip. The difference is so much wider now than 3-4 mos ago.

Book-ins to ICE facilities, a precursor to deportation, have been roughly matching 2019 rates.

Before today, DHS secretary‑nominee Mullin has been publicly in favor of current immigration enforcement levels and tactics. Not expecting any big U-turn on enforcement action, targeting, deportation levels, etc.

@bencarlson007.bsky.social's bookshelf game, impressive. Really need to get step up. Oh and conversation was great too. "When do Baby Boomers' homes hit the market?" is one of the most-asked questions clients/others ask. We go into that and a bunch more. www.youtube.com/watch?v=utrU...

Slowly but surely, work-from-home creeps lower. Low white-collar hiring probably brings this national figure lower over time, with very different paths regionally.

What @edzarenski.bsky.social describes is the *exact* result predicted by Howard, Wang, and Zhang (2025)... Immigration enforcement causes "significant loss of undocumented workers in construction" AND "net job losses for US-born workers." papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

My entire experience with Copilot, so far

US deaths held steady at 3.1 million in 2025, in line with the path from before 2020. We'll see this inch up every year from now on.

After declining for 13 years, US births have held steady since 2021. Why? Moms 30 and up are having more kids than ever, offsetting the long-term decline for moms under 30.

US births held steady at 3.62 million in 2025, near a 40+ year low.

Been saying 'Silver Tsunami' will more be a 'slow trickle'

US homes transferred by inheritance jumped 26% to 342K last year (source: Cotality) Not what you'd expect in a silver tsunami.

1.2 million excess deaths during pandemic did not kneecap housing demand. In fact, housing demand boomed. In 2020–2022, the number of homes lived in as primary residence grew at the fastest pace since probably the 1970s.

We (JBREC) have survey evidence showing there is in fact impact on occupancy and leasing. Different impacts by region, but it's definitely showing up.

Pretty good news, huh: Millennial parents spend more time with kids previous generations. Especially moms, but dads too. ...AND the average family has fewer kids. So that means the average kid is getting more mom-and-dad-time than ever before.

Ah, turns out AP is reporting the ban does not apply to non-immigrant (e.g., tourism) visas. Bloomberg's article didn't distinguish.

Brookings and CBO agree US immigration slowed dramatically in 2025. Neither expects a significant rebound in 2026.

Pulse check on immigration enforcement. Source: YouGov Survey, ICE Policies and Practices January 9 - 11, 2026 - 1,129 U.S. adult citizens

I think this is important. Success anchoring to increasingly fat tailed distributions. Reaching top 1% income is higher climb than ever. At the same time, the world is flatter than ever (the poorest 1% can follow the ramblings of the world's richest 24/7, and vice versa).

An under-appreciated "demographic cliff" of the next 20 years: Social Security Administration is extremely optimistic on both net immigration and birth rates, leading to unrealistic population assumptions. When (or if) they right-size their views, future social security benefits could be at risk.

Not a lot of labor switching between resi and data center construction.

Fascinating to see seasonality and multi-year cycles in the share of monthly births to first-time moms. Seasonality: typically peaks in Nov-Jan, bottoms in Jun Multi-year trends: rose through 2009, fell 2010-2019, rising again 2020-2025

Headline on our Pro Remodeling survey last month was "Pro remodeling hits new cycle low"

2025 feels early 2000s-ish. Solid GDP and a terrible job market. Americans are just as concerned about losing their jobs as in 2008-2009, which is pretty wild if true. Just one reason for homes sales aren't rising with lower mortgage rates.

Lines up with research we sent to clients last week calling out Walmart HQ's metro as 1 of ~15 local housing markets most exposed to H-1B changes, based on analysis of loan-level data by citizenship status.

2 recent immigration policy shifts affecting housing: 1) FHA banned lending to H-1B visa holders & other immigrants without permanent residency. 2) New $100,000 fee for companies applying to bring new H-1B workers into the US. Vastly different impacts market by market… jbrec.com/insights/imm...

Waller: likely that employment "actually shrank" in May, June, and July

Waller: Payroll jobs likely declined May-July "After accounting for the revisions that will be coming at some point... the data are likely to indicate that employment actually shrank—was negative—over those three months [May, June, and July]." www.youtube.com/live/EoHz0l3...