It's a Numbers Game: The Numbers Behind America's Housing Crisis with EJ Antoni

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
Episode: It's a Numbers Game: The Numbers Behind America's Housing Crisis with E.J. Antoni
Release Date: August 4, 2025

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1. Introduction and Host's Remarks [01:07 – 18:38]

Ryan Garduski kicks off the episode by expressing gratitude to his growing listener base, noting significant monthly growth and encouraging audience engagement through likes, subscriptions, and reviews. He introduces the episode's theme: exploring the rise of populism on the left and its connection to America's housing crisis. Garduski delves into the ideological underpinnings fueling left-wing populism, particularly focusing on race-based ideologies and their impact on societal dynamics.

Notable Quote:
"You can't help those kinds of people. You know, they're not capable of winning. And you just have to make sure those kinds of people never hold genuine political power." — Ryan Garduski [06:45]

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2. Overview of America's Housing Crisis [18:38 – 42:32]

Garduski presents a comprehensive analysis of the housing crisis in the United States by examining critical statistics from reputable sources like the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and Zillow. He highlights the staggering average home price of $512,800 in 2025, with metropolitan areas averaging slightly higher at $546,200. The discussion emphasizes the regional disparities, citing Detroit’s average home price at $254,000 versus upscale areas like Westmoreland nearing $1 million.

He outlines the estimated housing shortage, presenting a range from 2.5 million units (National Association of Realtors) to as high as 6 million units (American Enterprise Institute). Garduski underscores the supply issue by comparing the annual new home construction rate of approximately 1.464 million homes to the national need of 1.6 million to address the shortage, noting that higher estimates require up to 2 million new homes annually.

Notable Quote:
"Over the last 15 years, home prices have gone up 101% in the top 20 metropolitan areas. During the same period, hourly wages have gone up only 33% nationally and about 40% in those top 20 metropolitan areas." — Ryan Garduski [22:15]

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3. Guest Introduction: E.J. Antoni's Insights [42:32 – 44:38]

Ryan Garduski introduces E.J. Antoni, Chief Economist for the Heritage Foundation, as the guest expert to delve deeper into the housing crisis. Antoni brings an authoritative perspective on the economic factors driving the surge in housing prices and offers insights into potential solutions.

Notable Quote:
"It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me." — E.J. Antoni [18:49]

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4. Detailed Discussion on Causes of the Housing Crisis [44:38 – 42:32]

a. Inflation and Central Bank Policies [18:52 – 25:20]

Antoni explains that inflation directly impacts home prices by devaluing the currency, making homes more expensive in nominal terms. He critiques the Federal Reserve's policies of low-interest rates and purchasing mortgage-backed securities (MBS), which have inadvertently inflated housing prices by making mortgages more affordable and thus increasing demand. Antoni highlights the long-term consequences of these policies, drawing parallels to the prelude of the Great Depression.

Notable Quote:
"The result of that was the spillover... the Fed increased the demand for the underlying asset, which would be mortgages." — E.J. Antoni [22:50]

b. Disposable Income vs. Home Prices [25:20 – 27:00]

Garduski engages in a debate with Antoni regarding the relationship between disposable income and home prices. While some argue that disposable income growth justifies rising home prices, Antoni counters by presenting data showing that real disposable income has grown much slower compared to home price increases, especially when adjusted for inflation.

Notable Quote:
"From 2000 to 2025, real disposable income has only grown by 49% while home prices have grown by 84%." — E.J. Antoni [24:33]

c. Cost of Building and Zoning Laws [27:00 – 31:42]

The discussion shifts to the rising costs of building homes, including increased labor and material costs driven by inflation. Antoni critiques zoning laws as a significant barrier to increasing housing supply. He argues that strict zoning regulations, especially in major cities like New York and Los Angeles, contribute to high housing prices by limiting the types and quantities of new construction.

Notable Quote:
"Most single-family homes in America are built in areas that you can't upzone and it's very difficult." — E.J. Antoni [26:15]

d. Demand-side Factors: Immigration [31:42 – 36:34]

Garduski posits that immigration, both legal and illegal, significantly drives housing demand by increasing the population needing housing. Antoni acknowledges immigration as a substantial factor but emphasizes that the increase in housing supply has not kept pace with the surge in demand, exacerbating the housing shortage.

Notable Quote:
"Housing prices should be declining. But that's where immigration comes in." — Ryan Garduski [29:23]
"There's no empirical evidence that immigration has significantly increased the supply of housing." — E.J. Antoni [30:15]

e. Corporate Buying of Homes [36:34 – 42:24]

The conversation moves to the role of corporations in the housing market. Antoni argues that while there is an increase in investor purchases, these do not significantly alleviate the housing shortage because they primarily convert homes into rental properties rather than expanding the overall supply. He notes that the median age of homebuyers being older individuals purchasing second homes further limits the availability for first-time buyers.

Notable Quote:
"If it was as real as, as a lot of the politicians claim it is, then you would have seen... a huge increase in the supply of homes for rent." — E.J. Antoni [36:56]

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5. Case Study: Houston's Housing Strategy [42:24 – 36:34]

Garduski highlights Houston as a successful case study in mitigating the housing crisis by building approximately 70,000 homes in a single year amidst modest population growth. Antoni explains that Houston's lack of zoning laws has enabled expansive construction, keeping housing prices relatively affordable. He contrasts this with other major cities where strict zoning and limited expansion have perpetuated high housing costs.

Notable Quote:
"Houston has historically been one of the most affordable major metropolitan areas in the United States in large part because of that." — E.J. Antoni [32:46]

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6. Solutions and Recommendations [36:34 – 42:24]

Antoni offers pragmatic solutions for policymakers to address the housing crisis. He advocates for reducing both local and federal regulations that hinder housing construction. Lowering property taxes and cutting unnecessary government spending are essential to make homeownership more affordable and stimulate new home construction. Antoni also emphasizes the need for the federal government to limit excessive spending to prevent further inflationary pressures.

Notable Quote:
"Get the spending down, get the regulation down so you can reduce the cost of homeownership." — E.J. Antoni [40:06]

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7. Ask Me Anything: Gun Voters' Role in GOP [43:32 – 51:25]

In the AMA segment, Garduski addresses a listener's question about the importance of pro-gun voters in the Republican Party's coalition. Antoni elaborates on the critical role gun owners play in securing Republican victories, citing data that shows gun owners overwhelmingly support Republican candidates. He underscores that gun ownership remains a pivotal issue for the GOP, shaping policy and influencing electoral outcomes.

Notable Quote:
"49 out of 50 states, gun owners voted for the Republican presidential candidate in 2016." — E.J. Antoni [45:05]

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Conclusion

The episode provides an in-depth exploration of America's housing crisis, dissecting the multifaceted causes behind soaring home prices and insufficient housing supply. E.J. Antoni offers a data-driven analysis, highlighting the roles of inflation, zoning laws, immigration, and corporate buying in exacerbating the issue. The Houston case study serves as a practical example of how deregulatory measures can alleviate housing affordability problems. Additionally, the AMA segment reinforces the significance of gun voters in political dynamics, particularly within the Republican Party.

For listeners seeking further insights, E.J. Antoni can be followed on Twitter @ealejantony.

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Disclaimer: This summary excludes advertisements, intros, outros, and non-content segments to focus solely on the episode's substantive discussions.

Transcript

[Ryan Garduski]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Ryan Garduski]

Welcome back to A Numbers Game with Ryan Garduski. Thank you for being here. Again. I really have to just take a minute and thank everybody who listens to this podcast religiously. July was my best month so far. It was better than June, which is better than May. Every month. The show is growing and and I'm really building the show with you and for you. And I want to thank you for spending 90 minutes a week with me. I genuinely, truly appreciate it from the bottom. If you want to help me continue to grow this podcast, please like and subscribe. If you feel very generous, give me a review on Apple or Spotify wherever you listen to this podcast. So just thank you. All right, the theme of this episode is I've been thinking a lot about Zoran Mandani and his rise and the anxieties fueling left wing populism. Now part of that is fueled by race based ideology, right? You see the people who brazenly push left wing racism, people like Sunny Hostin from the View, who's like the most openly racist person on television, or Joy Reid formerly from msnbc, where everything in her eyes was based on race and all laws should be used to promote anti white racism. And while those people are black and so specifically two people, a lot of people who do promote this kind of stuff are white and they have this shared ideology that is anti white racism. There's also those who are just mindwashed people who are brainwash, rather brainwash completely and they just believe in Things like releasing criminals and redistributing wealth and legalizing drugs and pushing critical gender theory. That's transing the kids. I Remember back in 2023, there was a man named Ryan who lived a couple miles from me. His name is Ryan Carson. And despite having a lot on paper that we are similar on, we're both around the same age, we're both white guys, we, you know, have, we lived within a few miles of each other. Our names were both Ryan. We were a world apart politically. Ryan Carson was an antifa activist who had just genuine hate in his heart for conservatives in a way that I don't have for Democrats or progressives. He tweeted celebratory messages when Rush Limbaugh died. When the BLM rights destroyed police stations, he called police subhuman. He just was bathed in far left ideology over policing and race. And on October 4, 2023 at 4am he saw a young black man having a psychotic breakdown. This the kind of man who in a normal society should have been in a mental hospital whether he liked it or not. And Ryan approached the man trying to help him and instead of just calling the police, and the man responded by stabbing Ryan Carson to death in front of his girlfriend. Friends of Ryan Carson responded by saying that he would have felt sorry for the killer even after the crime and viewed him as just a victim of a broken system. But Ryan Carson was in fact the victim of a, of not just a cold blooded killer, but of a broken system. He was bathed in victimhood, ideology of the, of liberalism. You know, he was lied to and he believed the lie of race and poverty and crime. And he just was a broken person or a broken system. You can't help those kinds of people. You know, even after he was murdered, his girlfriend, who was witnessed his murder, campaign for Zoram Mandani because she was equally as brainwashed. She's going to create more victims like Ryan Carson and she doesn't view what she's doing as being, you know, negative towards the community at all. She thinks what she's doing is helpful for people who are poor, people who are, who need policemen, people who need the system to work. You genuinely have to just kind of let those people go. They're not capable of winning. And you just have to make sure those kinds of people never hold genuine political power, which might happen in New York City. And that's horrifying, but that's not all that A lot of these new supporters who are in their teens and twenties and even in my generation their thirties. They're not all blue hairs. They don't, you know, they all don't have blue hair. They don't all dream of defunding the police. Some are just really angry at long standing obstacles to achieve the American dream. And I might make this a longer series in the podcast and break it down issue by issue, but some of the things that come off the top of my head that are driving people to join progressive populist movements are things like housing and health care and the cost of education. If we're being totally honest with ourselves, Republicans and conservatives haven't done enough to properly explain why prices in these areas have gotten so out of hand and realistic public policy can address them. For today's episode, I want to talk about housing specifically. And let's talk with some numbers so we're all on the same page. According to the Federal reserve Bank of St. Louis and the website Zillow, which tracks this, the average home price in the United States in 2025 was $512,800. Now, of course, that's not the same everywhere, right? If you look at the top 25 metropolitan areas, the average is slightly higher at 546,200. And that's really weighted down heavily by some very inexpensive metropolitan areas like Detroit, where the average home price is 254,000. St. Louis, it's 262,000, and Houston is 337,000. Houston is an interesting case study because it's virtually no zoning laws allowing for massive construction. You know, you could have a strip club next to a gun shop next to a church next to an apartment building next to a single family house on one block if you wanted to. It's also the third largest city geographically in size. I think the only two that I don't think I know, the only two that have a larger physical size with a population of over 100,000 people are Anchorage, Alaska and Jacksonville. It's an immense physical piece of land, so there's a lot of places to build. And you can find neighborhoods like South Belt Ellington, where homes on the market can go for as low as $122,000, or Astrodome area, which is even cheaper than that. But it's nowhere near Midtown Houston. Areas like Westmoreland will run you close to a million dollars. Other areas like Katy, the Woodlands, River Oaks are equally as expensive, if not even more expensive. But I want to get to Houston in a little bit because I think it's an important case study about how to drive down housing prices and the way that a lot of libertarians sit there and say this is the answer to our problems. But let's get back to the numbers nationwide. There are, there is a housing shortage in America, but it's unclear on how much that shortage is, depending on who you ask. According to the national association of Realtors, that number is 2.5 million units. So we're short 2.5 million units. Freddy Max is 3.7 million. Zillow says it's 4.5 million. The Brookings Institute says it's actually 4.9 million and American Enterprise Institute says 6 million. So it really runs the gamut from 2.5 million to 6 million. Now let's just call it, say it's 4 to 4 to 5 million. Let's say Zillow is the most correct. Why don't we just build more houses? That seems like the obvious answer. Well, we do build a lot of houses in America. From 2020 to 2024, an average of 1.464 million. 1.464 million new homes were began construction every single year. But the US needs 1.6 million to address the housing shortage, according to the estimate by the national association of Realtors. And remember, that's the group that said there's only 2.5 million. If you go with Zillow or Freddie Mac or the Brookings Institute number, you need closer to 2 million new homes every year. Clearly this is a supply issue. And, and you know, when demand outstrips supply, prices go up. Over the last 15 years, home prices have gone up 101% in the top 20 metropolitan areas. During the same period, hourly wages have gone up only 33% nationally and about 40% in those top 20 metropolitan areas. So prices for house for homes are more than twice the rate of rate of wages. I got into a huge debate with my brother about this the other day. We were texting non stop and he was saying is actually that disposal income is growing on par with home median home prices. And he pointed to Chad GPT, which is this is why I hate AI. Chad GPT said that home median home prices had grown 14 times over since 1969 to 2019, while disposable income income grew 30, 13.27 times over. Now that's one answer is why home prices are growing. And I think it's sophomoric, but it's there. It's just that we have more disposable income. So therefore, you know, home prices are going up. But I think that's, I think you can't argue from that standpoint because it's too long of a time period and we essentially live in two different countries by that period. When you weight inflation especially and you look at real disposable income from 2000 to 2025, real disposable income has only grown by 49% while home prices have grown by 84%. So it's a much, much different number. Another argument, aside from home prices growing in line with disposable income and the housing supply shortage, you know what else is causing home prices to grow? What else are the other two other other major issues aside from that? Well, part of the answer could be that the cost of building a home has risen so much. The cost to build a new home is up 20% since 2020. It's partially because of the labor costs have gone up, which will come down as the industry continues to mechanize. But we're not there yet. But the other part is inflation. The dollar is weaker in value as far as purchasing power goes, and it's down significantly since COVID According to the St. Louis Fed, from 2020 to 2024, the dollar has lost about 20% of its nominal purchasing power. That means $100 in 2020 is worth about 83% dollars and 33 cents in 2024. Then there's the issue of zoning. Most single family homes in America are built in areas that you can't upzone and it's very difficult. Meaning that you can't have like a 20 story apartment building where a one family house currently exists in most cities in this country. Now this is the argument that progressives and libertarians love the most to talk about. We have to get rid of zoning. We have to get rid of zoning. We have to get rid of zoning. You will hear them say this till they're blue in the face. Progressives love this idea because it means you can flood cheaper housing in mostly pristine suburb areas or mostly pristine areas of of cities where people spend generations maintaining a good quality of life and good schools. To them, those places like the suburbs are the great evil in society because they're usually whiter, they're wealthier, they have better school systems. It's just, it's capitalism and whiteness and every bad thing in one bubble is, is marked up in zoning laws. For libertarians and the free market ilk and the gop, it's the chance to maximize growth and profits in desirable areas where single family homes exist. And because they don't care about maintaining cultural integrity or the fabric of society that generations spend time building. Why not destroy it? That's the libertarian argument. I mean, libertarians, I'll say this growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of cancer cells. And libertarians, they are equally on the same playing field when it comes to that. But what we haven't talked about and what most people will not talk about is the demand side. Now, I hate to be the guy who constantly brings up immigration all the time, but it is a key factor in our housing crisis. From 2020 to 2025, the US built $8.45 million new homes, while the population saw a Natural increase of 3.66 million people. 3.66 million people, 8.45 million homes. Housing prices should be declining. But that's where immigration comes in. Immigration plays a huge factor. Between 2020 and 2025, 4.7 million foreigners received legal permanent residence. That's legal immigration. It's not illegal. That's nothing to do with illegal immigration. That's legal immigrants. 4.7 million over four and a half years. Then during Biden's presidency, you add the 4.5 million illegal aliens who enter the country, plus the known gotaways, which is as many as 2 million plus those who are here on a visa system, and you get a housing shortage. And while they're not all buying homes, they're going somewhere. They have to rent an apartment, they have to live somewhere they can't all live on. They're not living in tents on the street. They're living in somebody's home somewhere or they're buying a home. And that's just the foreigners living in the U.S. foreigners owning homes in the U.S. who don't live here. Right. People who are. I spent, I spoke one time to Governor DeSantis team and they told me that there's hundreds of thousands of homes in Florida that are owned by Canadians who vacation there in the summer. Overall, between 1.1 to 2.6% of all home purchases between 2020 and 2024 were made by non US citizens who don't live in America. So 1.1 to 2.6 is not the main driving factor as to why home prices are increasing, but it is certainly a secondary factor. It's certainly especially a factor in high desirable destinations like major cities like Miami and New York or where people vacation in Florida. There's certainly something there. And there are other factors too, like the number of corporations purchasing homes. And there's a lot to discuss with it. So I brought on an amazing guest who really is an expert in the field and he's going to come on next and talk about what's driving the housing crisis, what's driving the increase in housing prices, and how we can fix it. Coming up NEXT.

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[Ryan Garduski]

Our guest on Today's episode is E.J. antoni. He is the chief economist for the Heritage foundation and he knows a lot about housing. So he's the guy to talk to for this episode. Ej, thanks for coming on the podcast.

[E.J. Antoni]

It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

[Ryan Garduski]

So I started off this podcast talking about the issue of housing as it comes to politics. Right. The left has really mobilized a lot of voters, especially urban voters, over the idea that housing is too expensive. Expensive. It's hard to find a good house. And there's really been a decline in standard of living over the issue of housing. So what I wanted to ask you is over the topics that people blame as being the main driver of housing and you could kind of explain if it is, if it isn't, how much is contributing. So the first being inflation, both the cost of building a house and the devaluation of our currency, of the purchasing power of a currency from overspending by the government.

[E.J. Antoni]

Sure, sure. It's important to keep in mind when we talk about inflation is not just the impact that inflation has on rents, on home prices. Right. But then we also have to consider what is the impact of what caused the inflation. And we can get to that in a second. So if we just look at the inflation itself real quick, Inflation as a monetary phenomenon is simply a devaluing of the currency. So now it just takes more of the currency to buy whatever it is you're trying to buy. In that regard, inflation affects housing just as much as it affects everything else. So by the official metrics, over the course of about four years, the dollar lost 20% or a fifth of its value. Roughly, if you use some non official metrics that include other measures of purchasing power, the decrease is actually substantially more than that. It's closer to 30% over the course of four years. But whatever the case, that's inflation. But you have to ask what caused the inflation? And you already alluded to that, the increase in government spending. How was that increase in government spending actually accommodated by the central bank? And the answer there is twofold. Because the central bank not only simply created money for the government to spend, right? The government went out there and bought all of these treasury bonds, for example, or treasury bills, treasury notes, whatever the case may be. They were buying treasury securities in order to take that off of the hands of private dealers like banks, so that banks then had the liquidity to buy more government debt. So it was an indirect purchase, you could say. However, in order to facilitate this, they also had to keep interest rates incredibly low, which also meant that the borrowing costs for the treasury were incredibly low. In other words, the yields on treasury, again, bills, notes, bonds, everything, the yields on all that treasury debt plummeted, but those low yields were not isolated to treasury markets. The whole quantitative versus qualitative theory of credit is very, very clear in that you can never just create one kind of credit en masse and then not expect it to filter out through other kinds of credit to the rest of the economy. This was most infamously perhaps illustrated in the late 1920s and ultimately helped cause the Great Depression. But you saw that again with the Fed creating all of this money for the government to spend and pushing down yields on Treasuries, again to facilitate government borrowing. The result of that, the spillover of that, I guess you could say though, was the fact that interest rates on things like mortgages plummeted. I mean, they went to essentially never before seen levels. That was also exacerbated by the fact that the Fed wasn't just buying treasury securities, they were also buying mortgage backed backed securities, or MBS as we commonly call them. That was something that the Fed started in the wake of the global financial crisis and the mortgage meltdown. And everything that really started teeing off in 2005, but bottomed out in 2009. And ever since that period, the Fed has had a certain amount of MBS on its books. It never did previously. By purchasing all of those mortgage backed securities, the Fed increased the demand for those mortgage backed securities. Well, what's the effect of that? If you increase the demand for that kind of financial derivative, you also increase the demand for the underlying asset, which would be mortgages. So if there's an increase in demand for mortgages, what's the incentive? As somebody who's, let's say a bank, you're a lender, you want to create mortgages. Well, now you have an increased incentive to do that.

[Ryan Garduski]

So, so in latent terms, for those who are not economists like myself, the, the low interest rates over a longer period of time and mortgage backed securities increase the driving option, the drive for people to jack up costs. Because the, the front, the front costs or the back costs rather of mortgages were so cheap.

[E.J. Antoni]

Right. When we, when we look at home ownership, right, the cost of home ownership, you actually don't care about the home price. That sounds weird because everyone is looking at the home price when they're buying a home, but that is only in the context of a certain interest rate market. So what you really care about when you're trying to buy a home as a potential home buyer, what you really care about is your monthly mortgage payment because that's what actually has to fit into your monthly budget. And so by pushing these interest rates down to next to nothing, I personally know a lot of people who have interest rates of 2%. Not an exaggeration on a 30 year fixed. I know a D, I know even more with the 2 1/2% rate.

[Ryan Garduski]

I'm sorry, mine's 2.99 right now. So I mean, there you go.

[E.J. Antoni]

But what happens then to home prices in that kind of environment? They explode. So on top of the increase in home prices that you already had from inflation, you had this whole interest rate dynamic that was happening behind the scenes also because of Federal Reserve policy that just made home prices absolutely explode faster than other asset classes.

[Ryan Garduski]

So I have a question for you because I got into a very heated debate with my brother about this and my brother said the reason that there is that, that home prices really haven't increased much more than disposable income since 1970. And it's really disposable income. How much disposable income we have is why home prices have increased. I don't think that that's true.

[E.J. Antoni]

Do you Know, the ratios there just. Just don't line up. Instead, what we've seen, really, since the early 1970s, is this move to just financialize everything. In other words, homes no longer are just a dwelling. Right? And I'm not talking about that homes have gotten more luxurious or anything like that, because from that standpoint, there's still a dwelling, right? There's still. The utility of housing, in other words, is still purely in the fact that it's a dwelling for you, no matter how Spartan or how luxurious that dwelling may be. Instead, what has changed is the fact that housing is now a way to protect yourself from inflation. Housing is a way for you to build wealth because it's going to inflate so much over time. And that's especially been true for the boomer generation, unlike for their parents or generations prior to that, where nobody actually looked at a home as something that was an investment. But that's how you look at it today. For basically all of American history, until the 70s, the way you looked at a home was it's an asset class where by the time you go to sell it, you're basically going to get out of it exactly what you paid for it. There was no net increase there. So the utility of it over time, again, was the fact that it was a dwelling, it was not an investment. You were not trying to get a rate of return. But because we have financialized housing in a broader move where we're kind of financializing everything due to interest rate manipulations, it really has completely changed how we look at housing as an asset class.

[Ryan Garduski]

What do you make of the claims, especially by libertarians and very far progressives, that it's just all zoning laws? It's the suburbs. The suburbs are the reason that we have a housing shortage, because they have strict zoning laws?

[E.J. Antoni]

Well, to a certain extent, I think there's some credence to that argument. For example, if we look at the areas of the country that have the strictest zoning laws, that have the most localized control in terms of where you can build and the kinds of dwellings you can build, those are also the prices where you. Excuse me. Those are also the places where you find the highest prices. However, the idea that that's the suburbs actually isn't the case. Where you find the strictest controls on housing is a lot of major city centers like New York City, specifically New York County, AKA Manhattan. It's Los Angeles county out in California, much of Cook county, which is where you find Chicago and Illinois. Those are the places where, you know, you have the Highest home prices because you have the worst overreach in terms of those, those kinds of controls. You actually don't find the highest prices for dwellings out in the suburbs. Now you might, you might be able to, if you kind of manipulate the data a little bit, say home prices are more expensive in the suburbs because that's where you find much bigger homes. But if you account for all those factors, it's really just not the case that the suburbs are the driver of home price inflation.

[Ryan Garduski]

Well, I think the suburbs are the, are the, the, the boogeyman, because they are, they're whiter than the country as, than, than, than the cities as a whole. Better schools, people who earn more incomes. Basically capitalism and white whiteness, the two great enemies of the progressive movement is this is encompassed in the suburbs. A lot of people approach the issue of housing from the issue of supply. We don't. We are, we're millions of homes short. I always kind of look at it from the issue of demand as well. Right. We are driving the demand because of mass immigration has increased the need for housing. California would have had a net loss over the last four years of almost 1 million people. But they didn't because immigrants replaced Americans who left the state because of failed policies.

[E.J. Antoni]

Sure.

[Ryan Garduski]

Am I wrong in saying that immigration is driving the housing crisis worse?

[E.J. Antoni]

Well, it is certainly a huge component and it's very clear that it has had a net negative contribution. I think you're absolutely right in that regard. If you look at just the number of illegal aliens that we know cross the border, forget all the ones that we, that we don't even know about, just the illegal aliens that we know cross the border during the four years of 2021 through 2024. That actually exceeds the population of New Jersey, which is the most densely populated state in the country. So let's just do a quick intellectual exercise. What do you think would happen to home prices, to rents, if all of those illegal aliens all went to New Jersey? Now, for better or for worse, they were spread out throughout the country. But if they all went to New Jersey, obviously rents and home prices would explode. So that effect has simply been diffused throughout the rest of the country. Not perfectly. You pointed out California, and you're absolutely right that were it not for the influx of both legal and illegal foreign immigration, then you would have seen populations go down much more substantially in the Golden State. But whatever the case, it's very clear that all of these people, they're in need of dwellings, and so they increase the demand for dwellings. So Then you have to ask, okay, price is determined by supply and demand. So what's the interplay there? Demand obviously is an increase. What's going on on the supply side? There is no evidence that all of those illegal aliens have in any way added to the supply of housing. Now, is it likely that some of them probably found jobs in the home building industry? Sure, it's perfectly plausible, but there's certainly no empirical evidence for it. And the number of those illegal aliens who would have had to have gotten jobs in that industry in order to offset the additional costs is so high that there's certainly no way that there's any kind of overlap there. In other words, even if you take a very optimistic scenario on the supply side, it still is a smaller increase than the increase in demand. Qed, There must have been a net increase on price that's positive.

[Ryan Garduski]

Well, and what, what, you know, the city of Houston is kind of like the epicenter for case study that prices have come down because they've built, I think, almost 70,000 homes in a single solitary year, which is immense, even though the population has only grown by 10,000. And they say, see, if we do this as the country as a whole, then we're going to be golden. But the population, the natural growth plus immigration of the country as a whole, in order to do that over the course of a decade, you need something like 80 million homes or 75 million homes. And everyone wants to live in the same 30 metropolitan areas. No one wants to live in the middle of the Nevada desert. So that is. Or not many people rather want to live in the middle of the Nevada desert. It becomes a race to the bottom. In my opinion. If you just look at from the strict standpoint of we do have to build more, but if you continue that into 50 years from now or 40 years from now, you're talking about living in these Chinese megacities where everyone lives in a cubicle and just saying, oh, well, look, it's a housing.

[E.J. Antoni]

Well, let's stick with the example of Houston for a moment because that's a place. Going back to your comment earlier about, you know, things like zoning laws, Houston essentially has no zoning laws, and they have historically been one of the most affordable major metropolitan areas in the United States in large part because of that. And what, what Houston has done as it has expanded ever outward. You know, most cities only have one highway that runs around it. You know, they call it a loop or a beltway here in D.C. right. Houston has three, and they're building more. And the reason for that is because the city just simply keeps growing. But you will have very, very substantial areas of Houston that you can go to today that feel actually pretty suburban, not urban. In other words, it's not just city block after city block of nothing but apartments. Instead you will find condos, townhomes and even independent or separate single family homes. So the idea that if we keep expanding cities or we keep building that we have to force ourselves into smaller and smaller dwellings, I don't think that's the case at all. The record of history doesn't show that. The other issue is that if you look at a lot of areas today that are major metropolitan areas and that are growing incredibly quickly, sticking with Texas, Austin is immediately coming to mind. That city is growing like gangbusters and it was actually a pretty small city, relatively speaking not that long ago.

[Ryan Garduski]

And well, Houston, sorry one, one thing without Houston is the third biggest land sized city in America, only behind Jacksonville and anchor Anchorage. I think in Alaska, like someplace like New York. They can't grow outwards. It's a bunch of violence.

[E.J. Antoni]

Sure.

[Ryan Garduski]

So the only way in what I was thinking of less so than Houston is rather than you have to grow upwards, you have to get cubicle size homes in those places like that, that rush up against water. I mean you can't build out anywhere else. Am I, am I just wanted to clarify that what I was talking about with that.

[E.J. Antoni]

Oh sure. But I would say that number one, there's no reason why as you build up, you can't build up in a large way. In other words, there's no reason why as you build skyscrapers, those skyscrapers have to all be five or six hundred square foot studio apartments. Right. You can build three or four bedroom apartments and there are areas of New York like that now they're outrageously expensive. But again, this goes back to the restrictions on building. The other, the other thing is that there's no reason why you have to stay on the isle of Manhattan. There's no reason why you can't continue building outward from there. And we've seen this over time. Right. It's not as if the areas, the communities outside of New York city were there 100 years ago. We have been slowly expanding outwards. And it's not just true for places where there are islands. Right. You can look at a city a little further south like Philadelphia. If you go to the, the historic areas of Philadelphia today, including a place where Thomas Jefferson used to live, it obviously is, is in the middle of, of downtown Philadelphia. But at the time of our nation's founding, it was considered the suburbs. He, he specifically picked that small house to live in for a while because it was away from the hustle and bustle of the city. It was away from, from the flies and the manure, from the horses, etc. So what has steadily happened over time is the areas that previously were suburbs are now just considered part of the city, and areas that previously were rural, that were literal farms or uncleared woodlands are being cleared over time and are being turned into suburbs.

[Ryan Garduski]

Okay, I have two questions left for you. So one being what do you make of the allegation? Not the allegation it is real, but what do you think of the whole premise of corporations buying housing as a main driver in the increased costs of it? Is that as real as what people claim it is or is that hyperbole really for political points?

[E.J. Antoni]

If it was as real as, as a lot of the politicians claim it is, then you would have seen, just as you would see a huge reduction in the supply of homes available for sale, you should have seen a huge increase, a corresponding increase in the supply of homes for rent. Because those businesses are not simply buying the homes to sit on them. They're not buying the homes for them to be vacant or for the CEO to go live in them. Right? They're buying them so they can turn around and rent them out. But you're not seeing that dramatic increase in the supply of rents which would then obviously put downward pressure on rent prices. The dynamic just simply isn't there. Now, is it true that we've seen an unusual amount of investors buying housing over the last several years? Absolutely. And that's been due to the fact that interest rates were kept so obscenely low for so long because not only did that reduce mortgage rates, but it also reduced rates again for general borrowing. And you don't have to pay the same interest rate when you're a large investment corporation, a large investment house, buying up a ton of housing, as somebody who's, you know, an individual trying to get, trying to get that 30 year fixed mortgage, those rates are not the same. And because they were so much lower for those, those major brokers, those major investors, the result was they could buy up much more housing than, than people could, could get more, could get mortgages to buy those homes. So for my understand that dynamic there's.

[Ryan Garduski]

From my understanding is like for all the, you know, times that BlackRock is buying property, most of the corporate purchasing is just LLC that individuals are doing. Like, you know, if someone owns a summer house or a vacation home or a second home to rent. It's usually done under an llc and that is responsible for a large chunk of all corporate purchasing. But I wanted your opinion on that. So you don't think that's the median.

[E.J. Antoni]

The median age of somebody buying a home today is like 50 something years old. In other words, these are people who already have homes and they're getting a second home. They're getting, like you said, they're getting that shore home which they're only going to use sometimes. And the rest of the time that they're Airbnb it or whatever the case may be renting it out. Right. For a first time home buyer, the average age is like 38. But if you don't limit it to just first time buyers, if you're looking at anybody buying a home today, I mean, it's, it's basically all baby boomers and they're getting second homes.

[Ryan Garduski]

You're going to, that's like a meme right there. Okay, so if you, if you were to advise some politicians, both federally and locally. Right. On how to relieve the thing, if you wanted to speak, if a Republican went up to you and saying, I understand this is a major motivator for progressive politicians, how do I address a reasonable alternative that sounds good and will actually drive down home prices? What do you say to somebody on the federal level and what do you say somebody on the local or state level?

[E.J. Antoni]

Well, regardless of whether it's a Republican or a Democrat, I would honestly tell them exactly the same thing. Which, let's start with the local level, although it's somewhat true for the federal level as well. You got to reduce regulations, you got to reduce spending at the local level. If you reduce spending, you can reduce property taxes, sometimes sales taxes, but it's, you know, locals almost always disproportionately rely on property taxes. Getting those property taxes down helps reduce the cost of ownership because again, that directly ties in to the monthly mortgage payment, which is what we said has to fit into the potential home buyers monthly budget. So that's a big component. Get the spending down, get the regulation down so you can reduce the cost of homeownership, reduce the cost of building new homes as well at the federal level. Similarly, there are plenty of federal regulations that drive up home prices nationwide. You got to get rid of those. They're just, they're inefficient. They don't protect homeowners like they say they should. So they're not worth it. They impose costs without imposing commissary benefits and then you got to get the spending down because the spending is what drives the borrowing, which is what drives the Fed policy, which is what drives the interest rate manipulations and has contributed to this massive mess in the first place and completely frozen over the housing market. You're in this bizarre situation today because of excess government spending where people are sitting like yourself are sitting on a 2.99% mortgage. Why on earth would you sell your home today, lose that mortgage and then have to get a new one at 7 or 8 or even 9%? In some markets you'd have to downsize. You can't afford the same home anymore. Your monthly payment would absolutely explode. So you've frozen over the existing or used housing market. At the same time. Cost for home builders are at a record high because of inflation and they can't afford to borrow money because of today's higher interest rates. So you've also drastically decreased the supply that's coming online in terms of new construction. So all in all it has completely frozen over the housing market because the government just couldn't get control of its spending.

[Ryan Garduski]

Spending is deficit. Spending is the hidden tax that no one sees. So E.J. and Tony, thank you so much for coming on this podcast. Where can people go to read more of your stuff?

[E.J. Antoni]

Best place to find me is on X and the handle there is ealejantony.

[Ryan Garduski]

Thank you so much for coming on.

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[Ryan Garduski]

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[Ryan Garduski]

Now it's time for the Ask Me Anything segment of the show. If you want to be part of the Ask Me Anything segment, email me. Ryanumbers gamepiece podcast.com that's ryan@Numberspluralgame podcast.com I've had a backlog. I've been very successful in working that down. We only have a few emails left, so if you email me now, I will get to it on the show on a pretty quick manner. So this email comes to Matthew Shenzheng. I hope I got the name right. He says, Ryan, I quite enjoy your show and Always found it enlightening and informative. My question is, how important are pro gun voters in the Republican Party voting coalition? As it always seems, the Republican politicians ignore gun rights issues to the pro gun base. Yet I hear pro gun people saying to each other at extremely important parts of the base, how does it make sense if they constantly feel ignored by the Republican Party? Okay, this is a great question. Thank you so much, Matthew. So when it comes to gun rights there, about 42% of Americans live in a home where someone owns a gun and about 33% actually own the gun themselves. And there's big differences in the population. For example, older voters, older Americans have more likely to own a gun than younger Americans. White Americans more than Hispanic or black Americans, rural Americans more than urban Americans, yada yada, yada. Gun rights are interesting because the opinion of them sways very significantly from both those who don't own a gun and those who only own like one gun. Right. Among people who only own one gun or maybe less, there are a very big support for what they say is, quote, unquote, common sense gun laws. Right. Policies that are more restrictive, like preventing people from mental illness and purchasing guns, has like an 89% approval rating among Republicans, even who own guns. Increasing the minimum age to buying a gun has 69% support among Republicans. Then there's issues like banning assault style weapons, which is like, you know, it's a ridiculous term. There's no such thing as an assault style weapon, but even that has 40% support. And then there's issues like allowing teachers to carry guns, which is a 75% support among Republicans. And issues like allowing people to have concealed carry in more places has a 71%. It's a very splintered position. Right. Not everyone who owns a gun is supportive of all expansive and more permissive gun laws. And not everyone who doesn't own a gun is not supportive of all restrictive gun laws. Right. So it's, it's very, it's not one or the other. It's kind of a mixture of both when it comes to the vote of gun owners. Right. Specifically gun owners. In 2017, Nate Cohen from the New York Times did a breakdown of all the states in the country based on gun owners and how they voted. There was only one state in the entire country where a, where a majority of gun owners voted for Hillary Clinton, and that was Vermont. Vermont. In, in 2016, Hillary won Vermont's Gun Owners 5142. Every other state in the country, California, Trump won gun owners by 12 points. New York, Trump won gun owners by 30 points. Florida, Trump won gun owners by 34 points. In Texas, Trump won gun owners by 36 points. 49 out of 50 states, gun owners voted for the Republican. What about non gun owners? And a majority of non gun owners in 49 of the 50 states coincidentally voted for the Democrat. The only state where Trump won a majority of non gun owners was West Virginia, which he won by 14 points. But, you know, go to the reddest states in the country. Go to Arkansas. Trump lost non gun owners by 11 points. Mississippi, Trump lost non gun owners by 48 points. Go to Tennessee. Trump lost non gun owners by 15 points. Nothing divides voters like a gun. And the Republican Party cannot win without gun owners. There's just no way. Gun owners are the make and break and they turn states red. And gun ownership is on the rise and it's becoming more diversified. There are more black and female and Latino gun owners, which has made the issue change the issue. But I think when it comes to the question, do they feel, do gun owners feel like their rights are being disrespected? It really depends on who you talk to. The idea of constitutional carry was considered, you know, a very weird issue in the year 2000. In the year 2000, only one state had constitutional carry, and that was Vermont. And now more than half the states in the country have constitutional carry. That's an immense change and I think an immense culture war win for the Republican Party more than anything else. And look, if you look at where they spend so much of their time in the judiciary trying to get conservative judges, there's no place they have fought harder for than on second amendment rights. So. So yes, gun owners, extremely important for the Republican Party. Can't win without them. 49 out of 50 states, gun owners, a majority gun owners voted for the Republican presidential candidate in 2016. 49 of 50 states, they voted for the Democrat non gun owners did in 2016. But as far as feeling disrespected, I think it's really a question of who you ask. But great question, Matthew. And I hope that that was insightful to how gun owners, you know, they make or break the Republican Party. And we need our second Amendment for more than one reason. But politically, the Republicans definitely need people to own guns. So thank you for listening. Thank you for your question. I'll be back on Thursday. Please like and subscribe on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you listen to podcasts. I'll see you later this week.

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[E.J. Antoni]

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[Ryan Garduski]

21 + terms and conditions apply this is an iHeart podcast.