Solving America's Problems

Freddie Mac's 30-year average rate rose to 7.4% last week , up from 6.3% a year ago, which Jerremy Alexander Newsome says adds $294 a month on a $400,000 loan. He and Dave Conley start with Russia , which is about to sell America diesel, with a first load that covers less than two hours of the world's demand. Jerremy says SpaceX buying airwaves sent the three biggest phone companies down as much a...

The economy added 29,000 jobs against 90,000 expected , and the Nasdaq is still at all-time highs. Jerremy Alexander Newsome says the 10-year Treasury rose a fifth straight week to 5.277% , pushing the 30-year mortgage to 7.28% , the highest since 2023, and he thinks double-digit mortgage rates could land before the next president's term. Dave Conley calls it demand destruction : the Fed squeezes...

Nashville approved every one of roughly 200 rezoning requests over two years, added about 75,000 housing units in a decade, and is still net less dense than it was 25 years ago. Christopher Serkin uses that to argue looser zoning alone won't deliver affordability, and that homeowners associations would fill the void if zoning vanished. Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley press him on Wall St...

For roughly the first 85 to 90 years of zoning, the left and right split on it. Now they agree it's the problem. Christopher Serkin says that convergence makes him nervous, and he calls it the liberal-tarian consensus. Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley ask who should decide how fast a neighborhood changes. He says it depends on the market, and that a state overriding local control feels ve...

Housing can't be both affordable and a good investment. Christopher Serkin says that tension is the lesson the country forgot after 2008, when so many recent buyers lost everything. Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley ask whether zoning is really the whole story. He says it's one problem among several, and that fixing only zoning could make outcomes worse in many markets. He also argues home...

Nashville approved every one of roughly 200 rezoning requests over two years and added about 75,000 housing units in a decade, and it is still net less dense than it was 25 years ago. Christopher Serkin says that's why he doubts looser zoning alone delivers affordability. Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley ask what fills the gap if zoning disappears, and he says homeowners associations woul...

In 1976, homes under 1,400 square feet made up a third of new construction; by 2020, that number was 7%. Gene Eidelman sold $100 million in real estate within three years of arriving as a refugee, then built Azure Printed Homes , which 3D-prints houses from recycled plastic in weeks instead of months. He details the zoning fights blocking affordable manufactured homes, wildfire data showing 2008-c...

Homes built under California's 2008 fire code survived last year's wildfires 80% of the time; homes built before it were destroyed 80% of the time. Gene Eidelman breaks down the cheap fixes behind that gap — double-pane windows, mesh over AC vents, no wooden fences touching the house. He and Jerremy also dig into LA County's homelessness numbers: 75,000 people, with only 18% showing drug addiction...

One Ohio city's zoning code outright bans manufactured homes in a low-income neighborhood — even for a project explicitly meant to be affordable. Gene Eidelman calls it a holdover from 1960s trailer-park stigma that has nothing to do with how these homes actually perform today. He walks through how ADUs, junior ADUs, and new state rules allowing four to eight units per lot are quietly solving Cali...

In 1976, homes under 1,400 square feet made up a third of new construction; by 2020, that number had fallen to 7%. Gene Eidelman arrived in the U.S. as a refugee from the former Soviet Union, got his real estate license within a year, and sold $100 million in property within three years. He's since built thousands of homes and co-founded Azure Printed Homes , which 3D-prints houses from recycled p...

Austin added new housing three times faster than the rest of the country for a decade — rents dropped below the national average, and young families left anyway, in numbers big enough that schools are now closing. Ryan Puzycki, who sits on Austin's zoning board, says outdated codes banned entire housing types — no fourplexes, no missing middle, no SROs. He traces the homelessness crisi...

Houston cut its homeless population by 60 to 70 percent over the past decade — while San Francisco spends roughly five times more per person for worse results. Ryan Puzycki says Houston made it easy to build housing, then used homeless dollars for rapid rehousing instead of expensive permanent supportive housing. He also names Texas's bipartisan Senate Bill 840 as a state model, and argues s...

America once had millions of single-room-occupancy units — the cheapest legal housing in the country — and cities spent decades tearing them down. Ryan Puzycki calls this lost category the "banished bottom," and traces the rise of chronic homelessness to almost the same years those units disappeared. He also argues family flight , not average rent, is the real measure of whether a city...

Austin added new housing three times faster than the rest of the country for a decade, and rents fell below the national average. Young families left anyway — enough that Austin's own schools are now closing for lack of kids. Ryan Puzycki sits on Austin's zoning board and says a decades-old code banned entire housing types, from fourplexes to corner stores mixed with apartments. He also ran...

More than half of homeowners are locked into a rate under 4%, and an estimated 1.7 million home sales never happened because of it. Daniel Sosa has worked mortgages since 2007, when he watched Stockton become the foreclosure epicenter of the country. He tells Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley that 65% of today's homeowners sit below a 4% rate with zero incentive to sell, while 5 million bu...

Dave Conley presses Daniel Sosa on exactly who gets rejected versus approved. Daniel says anybody can eventually qualify for a home — the real question is credit profile and income, and credit-challenged buyers get a step-by-step plan instead of a flat no. He describes taking one client's credit score from 702 to 740 over 30 days to avoid $16,000 in points, and explains how self-employed borrowers...

Jerremy Alexander Newsome challenges Daniel Sosa to steelman the case against his own industry: don't easier loans just inflate prices further? Daniel doesn't dodge it — he says 65% of homeowners today sit below a 4% rate and have zero incentive to sell, while an estimated 5 million buyers wait on a market short roughly 3 million homes. He lays out why a 2008-style crash can't repeat, since 97% of...

More than half of homeowners are locked into a rate under 4%, and an estimated 1.7 million home sales never happened because of it. Daniel Sosa, a mortgage broker who started in the business in 2007, tells Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley he never charges the $1,300 to $2,500 in ancillary fees most banks build into every closing, saving clients $7,000 to $9,000 per transaction on average....

More than half of Americans with a mortgage are locked in under 4%, freezing nearly two million home sales. JD Cobb has spent two decades closing loans in Texas, and his advice runs against the wait-and-see instinct: buy at today's price, refinance later. He takes Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley through the whole machine — the four Cs , who really owns your note, the pay option ARMs he w...

There are twelve down payment assistance programs in Austin and Travis County alone, and JD Cobb says almost nobody asks. He names TSAC and TDHCA , which cover three to five percent down, plus a mortgage credit certificate he can count as monthly income. He tells Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley that a soft credit pull costs the buyer nothing and that he'll pay to rescore a client's credi...

The average American buyer is now 38 years old — Dave Conley bought his first home in his twenties and had to borrow the down payment from friends. Dave and Jerremy Alexander Newsome press JD Cobb on where the starter home went, and JD is blunt: Gen Z is skipping steps, and his own first house cost $187,000. He explains what happens when a self-employed file hits an underwriter's desk, why writing...

More than half of Americans with a mortgage are locked in under 4%, and that lock-in alone has frozen out nearly two million home sales. JD Cobb's answer sounds backwards: don't wait for the rate, buy at today's price and refinance later. He walks Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley through what a refinance actually involves, the four Cs every lender checks, and who owns your loan once it's...

22.6 million U.S. households now pay more for housing than they can afford, and the average home costs five times the average salary. Sam Froerer, who co-owns thousands of apartment units through Compass Capital, has never owned his own home himself. He tells hosts Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley that the industry treats tenants like a commodity, and the top 50 owners control under 11% o...

A $100,000 investment can show $60,000 of paper losses in year one — a tax benefit ordinary renters never get access to. Sam Froerer tells Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley that Trump-era policy restored 100% bonus depreciation after Biden had cut it to 40%. He argues the top 1% pulling away from everyone else is the same pattern behind every collapsed civilization in history. Asked...

Landlords call it "value-add," and raising rent $100 to $200 a month after new cabinets and a dog park is the same move the industry has run for decades. Sam Froerer calls his own company "experience-add" instead, telling Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley that renters need income at two-and-a-half times rent just to qualify. Insurance per unit in Florida and Texas tripled from $600 to $3,0...