On the outskirts of Dallas/Fort Worth, where pastureland once stretched uninterrupted to the horizon, thousands of new structures are rising. Windowless. Warehouse-sized. Fenced in and humming with electricity. These are not fulfillment centers or factories. They are data centers, the physical backbone of artificial intelligence. Texas, long known for oil rigs and subdivisions, is now ground zero for the AI economy.
Housing affordability remains one of the most pressing challenges facing aspiring homeowners, renters, and communities, Bob Broeksmit, president and CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), said in a statement. Today's overwhelmingly bipartisan vote in the House Financial Services Committee is a significant milestone. Broeksmit said the bill advances several long-standing MBA priorities, including updates to Federal Housing Administration (FHA) multifamily loan limits, targeted improvements to rural housing programs and stronger coordination among federal agencies.
As families leave, our school enrollment declines, our tax base erodes, and neighborhood stability crumbles. The article highlights the fact that median asking rent for family-sized apartments with three or more bedrooms is now nearly $5,000 a month. That's impossibly high for so many, including those who were born and raised here. As a result, families are leaving New York City at higher rates than other demographic groups and at a higher rate than families are leaving other major cities.
If starting a family, buying a house, or just thinking about purchasing a car feels impossible-you're definitely not alone. What used to define "middle class" feels further out of reach for Millennials and Gen Z than ever before. Rising costs, stagnant wages, and where you live all play huge roles in whether big life milestones feel doable-or merely like dreams. So has the middle class actually disappeared, or is it just morphing into something new?
So the housing market faces some really significant challenges, and I don't know that, you know, a 25 basis point decline in the federal funds rate is going to make much of a difference for people. You know, housing supply is low. Many people have very, very low, low, low rate mortgages from the pandemic period, and they kept refinancing and caught the really low. So it's expensive to them to move. And you know, we're a ways away from that changing.
President Trump's proposal for 50-year mortgages aims to tackle the housing affordability crisis by lowering monthly payments. The plan, supported by Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte, would extend the standard 30-year term to 50 years, potentially through backing by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Supporters argue this could help younger buyers and first-time homeowners enter the market amid high home prices and elevated interest rates.
The dirty secret many now understand is that a lot of wage labor is not enough to get by in America anymore. The past promise of working hard for 40 hours per week and getting a home and a retirement in return is gone for a significant chunk of this country, stripped away by capitalists whose only desire in their miserable lives is to have more than they currently do.
According to the First American Real House Price Index, which adjusts prices for income and interest rate changes, housing affordability has posted its longest stretch of annual improvement since late 2019 and early 2020. Wage gains outpaced home-price appreciation in 2025 and mortgage rates eased off their peaks, helping repair some of the damage. But the progress has been far from uniform.
The housing market only continues to look more bleak for younger generations-and it shows. The average age for a first-time homebuyer recently jumped to 40, signaling the housing market is starved for affordability. And younger generations are so disappointed and frustrated by the state of the housing market they're spending more of their earnings than they're saving, working less, and making risky investments, according to a recently published paper by Northwestern University and University of Chicago researchers.
The Thurmond Amendment, passed in 1988, is a carve-out of the Fair Housing Act that enables landlords-and the algorithmic screening software they increasingly rely on-to summarily deny housing to applicants with any conviction related to selling drugs, regardless of the circumstances. The result has been to undermine housing affordability. If the nation is to act and start making housing more affordable, removing this barrier is one obvious step to take.
Option A is a beautiful home in California near good schools and job opportunities. But it goes for nearly a million dollars - the median California home sells for US$906,500 - and you'd be paying a mortgage that's risen 82% since January 2020. Option B is a similar home in Texas, where the median home costs less than half as much: just $353,700. The catch? Option B sits in an area with significant hurricane and flood risk.
Analyzing nearly 650 counties, cities and towns that have participated in the AARP Livability Index over the past decade, new Cornell research shows most have made progress developing communities conducive to aging in place across a range of metrics, from transportation to civic engagement. Some 31,000 other places that are not part of AARP's age-friendly network also made improvements, but to a lesser extent.
There are a lot of false solutions being peddled these days. We hear things like: Your rent is too high, so the government should deport immigrants. Your wages aren't enough, so billionaires should get lower taxes. You're worried about your kids' future, so trans kids should lose their rights. These are real problems paired with false solutions. Real problems deserve real solutions.
Despite the popular (and mostly accurate) narrative that affordability is practically over in Boston, there is still some relative value to be had in 2026 inside city limits (of course, one shouldn't get their hopes up for a discount on a Beacon Hill townhouse). Buyers who want the most bang for their buck should look in areas like Hyde Park, Roslindale, Dorchester, Mattapan, and parts of East Boston, according to Melvin A. Vieira Jr. of RE/Max Destiny.
We no longer need as much centralized power generation, yet it is still the planning model used by PG&E and the other investor-owned utilities (IOUs). Instead, the IOUs should be leading the effort to grow local electricity generation through solar panels, wind turbines and batteries. Microgrids should be the main method of distribution, and costly transmission lines should be minimized.
Today's buyers aren't just looking for a house they're looking for a sense of community, said Chris Lim, REMAX's chief growth officer. It's the job of real estate professionals to help prospective buyers find homes and neighborhoods that meet their financial needs while also supporting the way they want to live. Economic uncertainty and rising housing costs remained the top barriers among respondents. About three-quarters (78%) said more affordable home prices would prompt them to buy within six months.
He stressed that the U.S. mortgage-backed securities market relies on long-term, fixed-rate loans with highly predictable performance, something portability threatens to destabilize. Portable mortgages, in addition to other issues, would totally destroy the pricing models current used by MBS's in their investor presentations, Cantrell said. The portable mortgage is also predicated on widespread lender adoption and the lender being willing to trade one asset for another.
Forget waiting for lower rates. The affordability ceiling has structurally reset. Even as mortgage rates ease, affordability remains the defining constraint on homebuilding demand, the report states bluntly. U.S. home prices rose 4.4% in 2025, outpacing wage growth. The National Association of Realtors' Housing Affordability Index hit its lowest level since 1989. In Canada, mortgage payments now consume 54% of average household income, far above the historical average of 35%.
The authors of the report, now in its 25th year, warn that this massive upheaval is threatening the country's stability. "Instability is shaping nearly every part of young people's lives," said John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Institute of Politics, in a Zoom with reporters and students involved in the survey. By the numbers: A majority of respondents (57%) say the country is headed in the wrong direction - a six-point rise from last year, and one point down from the record high notched in the spring of 2024.
Andrew Rendon liked some elements of his commute, though many people wouldn't. That's because his commute entailed a roughly 2.5-hour drive and a flight to boot. Rendon, a 31-year-old DevOps or development and operations engineer, and his wife used to live and work in central New Jersey, but within the past year the couple moved to North Carolina, where his wife found a job.
I think it brings a lot of benefits," District 3 Councilmember Anthony Tordillos, a key backer of the reforms, told San José Spotlight. "It means that we can build multifamily housing on more small parcels - close to downtown, close to our transit networks - that are currently really difficult to build under the current building codes.
A MARTINEZ, HOST: President Trump has a suggestion - lower monthly mortgage payments. He posted a picture on Truth Social this weekend titled Great American Presidents. It has a portrait of FDR under the banner 30-Year Mortgage. Now, above Trump's head, 50-Year Mortgage. Susan Wachter is a professor of real estate and finance at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Susan, so a 50-year mortgage, would that make housing more affordable?
The idea of the 50-year mortgages flooded the news recently. It is the newest attempt by the Trump Administration to bring down housing costs, but I don't think it was thought through entirely. On paper, it seems like a crazy but good idea. 50 years is a long time, but at least it would allow people to enter into the housing market. But as soon as you dive into the numbers, you realize how the 50-year mortgage could ruin the real estate market forever.
The Oval Office gaggle wasn't supposed to change anything. It was supposed to be content President Donald Trump and his newly elected progressive foil, each performing the roles cable news has spent months codifying. Conservative media had already settled on its narrative. The White House press corps arrived expecting friction, spectacle, maybe even fireworks. What they got instead was a different story not about conflict, but about alignment.
