McGill's partner Ivy Zelman, who is perhaps best known for one of the first warnings about the subprime mortgage crisis over a decade ago, agreed.

"The market is too hot. There is just a massive amount of capital that's coming to the space," Zelman said, referring to the investor interest in the housing market. "We actually believe the industry is already overbuilding in single-family to normalized demand by roughly 20% and about 10% for multi-family, so we couldn't be on more of an opposite side of where the market is and where the industry is, frankly."

...

Some economists have warned that the collapse of Evergrande could become China's "Lehman moment" -- a reference to the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers as a result of the subprime mortgage crisis, which triggered the 2008 global financial crisis.

However, Capital Economics senior global economist Simon MacAdam described that narrative as "wide of the mark."

"In the next few years, two women will earn a college degree for every man, if the trend continues, said Douglas Shapiro, executive director of the research center at the National Student Clearinghouse," the Wall Street Journal writes. 

The story delves into the most obvious question: is this really such a big deal? After all, if men were prioritized in the past, isn't it only fair that women take the lead for now? According to experts, it's not as simple as a seesaw. 

"If you care about our society, one, and, two, if you care about women, you have to care about the boys, too," Jennifer Delahunty, a college enrollment consultant who previously worked at Kenyon College and Lewis & Clark College, told the paper. "If you have equally educated numbers of men and women that just makes a better society, and it makes it better for women."

Could young men (subconsciously or intentionally) be "boycotting" higher education because they feel they will be disfavored (or, alternatively, that they'll "finally have to really compete" against women)? Or perhaps men are more sensitive to the bum economic deal that college now presents, whereas women aren't? We definitely need to figure this out and address it, because this seems set to hugely destabilize society...

Overall, roughly a quarter of the more than 1,100 suburbs near the nation's 50 largest metro areas are renter-dominated, according to Rent Cafe. Some 21 million people rented their homes in the suburbs as of 2019, up from 17 million a decade ago.

Millennials and members of Generation Z account for most suburban renters, Census data show. Rent Cafe notes that 55% of suburban renters are younger than 45, with median household earnings of around $50,000.

Meanwhile, the pandemic is expected to further fuel the shift away from suburban homeownership in favor of renting. Remote work opportunities have generated more interest in suburban areas within striking distance of cities.

More New Yorkers did move to Florida than normal. The post office data logged 25,843 moves to Miami/Fort Lauderdale from the New York/Jersey City area in 2020. The year prior, when there was no pandemic, there'd been 20,794 similar moves.

Willett said the bump in NY-to-Miami movers represented "a meaningful increase, not just a small increase, but when you look at the grand scheme of migration into and out of South Florida, the flows from places like New York are still a very small portion of the moves to begin with."

... By far, young single urbanites made the most moves, while a demographic "GenXUrban" -- with kids, cars and mortgage payments -- made the fewest.

Of course, the economy has recovered more quickly than in past recessions. It's now larger than it was before the pandemic, according to Commerce Department data released Thursday.

Hiring is also up over the past few months. The economy added 850,000 new jobs in June, after 583,000 in May and 269,000 in April. However, the U.S. has yet to recover almost 7 million lost jobs versus pre-pandemic levels.

...

Twenty-six states ended their participation in federal unemployment programs over June and July, to try to encourage recipients to return to work -- effectively moving up the benefits cliff for residents by about two to three months.

With the $300 supplement, almost half of jobless workers (48%) make as much or more money on unemployment benefits than their lost paychecks, according to a recent paper published by the JPMorgan Chase & Co. Institute.

The extra funds had a small impact on job-finding among workers, but didn't significantly hold back the job market, according to economists Fiona Greig, Daniel Sullivan, Peter Ganong, Pascal Noel and Joseph Vavra, who authored the analysis.

And though it's still early, evidence so far doesn't suggest the state policies immediately pushed people back into the workforce.

If you believe the economy is larger now than before the COVID recession, I have a bridge to sell you (and when I do, we'll count that transaction towards economic growth as well!)

Discussions about how and when the Fed will taper off its buying are ongoing, but most economists expect bond-buying to slow late this year or early next. That should nudge mortgage rates higher and slow the booming market a little.

But borrowing costs are likely to remain low by historical standards for years to come. Longer-term interest rates have fallen even as the Fed considers dialing back bond purchases, because investors have grown more glum about the global growth outlook. And the Fed is unlikely to lift its policy interest rate -- its more powerful tool -- away from rock bottom anytime soon.

Ideally, officials would like to see the economy return to full employment before lifting rates, and most don't expect that moment to arrive until 2023. They're unlikely to speed up the plan just to cool off housing. Fed officials have for decades maintained that bubbles are difficult to spot in real time and that monetary policy is the wrong tool to pop them.

For now, your local housing market boom is probably going to be left to its own devices -- meaning that while first time home buyers may end up paying more, they will also have an easier time financing it.

And they'll have an easier time ending up underwater whenever this boom reverses...

...

But the data may not help insured patients who notice their prices are higher than those negotiated by other insurers.

In those cases, legal experts say, the insured patients are unlikely to get a bill changed because they have a contract with that insurer, which has negotiated the price with their contracted hospitals.

For most of the last 40 years, less than full employment has tended to give employers the advantage. As it becomes harder to find qualified candidates, though, employers are often slow to adjust expectations.

Among job seekers interviewed at job fairs and employment agencies in the St. Louis area the week after the benefit cutoff, higher pay and better conditions were cited as their primary motivations. Of 40 people interviewed, only one -- a longtime manager who had recently been laid off -- had been receiving unemployment benefits. (The maximum weekly benefit in Missouri is $320.)

In St. Louis, the Element Hotel held a job fair to hire servers, bartenders and front-desk receptionists. Housekeepers were especially in demand. Janessa Corpuz, the general manager, had come in on a Sunday with her teenage daughter to do laundry because of the shortage.

The hotel, which is on a major bus line, raised its starting wage to $13.50 an hour, the second increase in two months. It also offers benefits and a $50-a-month transportation allowance. The number of applicants shot up -- to 40 from a handful the previous month -- after the second wage increase.

...

Justin Johnson, too, already had a job when he showed up at an Express Employment Professionals office. He was working at a pet feed company, earning $14 an hour to shovel piles of mud or oats. But that week temperatures topped 90 degrees every day and were heading past 100.

"The supervisor pushed people too hard," Mr. Johnson said. He had to bring his own water, and if it was a slow day, he got sent home early, without pay for the lost hours.

He accepted an offer to begin work the next day at a bottle packaging plant, earning $16.50.

Amy Barber Terschluse, the owner of three Express franchises in St. Louis, handles mostly manufacturing, distribution and administrative jobs. Wages, hours and a short commute are what matter most to job seekers, she said, and few would work for less than $14 an hour.

...

In St. Louis, a single person needs to earn $14 an hour to cover basic expenses at a minimum standard, according to M.I.T.'s living-wage calculator. Add a child, and the needed wage rises just above $30. Two adults working with two children would each have to earn roughly $21 an hour.

For Elizabeth Stribling-Kivlan, a senior managing director at Compass, one of the spring's most heartening developments was improvement in the financial district, a neighborhood that became a veritable ghost town during the pandemic with the emptying out of office buildings. Median prices there soared 33 percent in a year, the largest increase of any neighborhood, she said.

...

Prices [generally], though, may have a ways to go. The price per square foot for resale apartments, which is a useful indicator because it controls for the apartment size, Mr. Miller said, actually declined this spring over a year ago, to $1,408 from $1,461, or 3.6 percent.

"Prices are still not at parity with a year ago," he said. The overall discount that buyers are paying on list prices is at 6.4 percent, which is better than 2020 but still higher than the decade average of 4.9 percent. "There still is a Covid discount out there," Mr. Miller said, "but it's easing."

...

There are signs that the situation in New York could get worse. A third of leases at large Manhattan buildings will expire over the next three years, according to CBRE, a commercial real estate services company, and companies have made clear they will need significantly less space.

...

About 14 million square feet of office space is under construction in New York City, which is equal to about double the size of Orlando, Fla.