Data-Driven Housing Policy with AEI’s Ed Pinto

In this episode of the Top of Mind podcast, Mike Simonsen sits down with Ed Pinto, senior fellow and co-director of the AEI Housing Center at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), for a fascinating look at how housing policy shapes the market and the world we live in.

Tapping into his decades of experience in the housing and mortgage markets, Ed shares lessons from the 2008 bubble we can apply to today, uses data to examine the relative merits of different housing policies over the years, and gives his take on how to tackle affordability and homelessness. He also talks about why he’s optimistic about the housing market in the years to come.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn: 

• What data is best to use for understanding housing in the U.S.
• The biggest lessons of the 2008 bubble and what they tell us about today
• The real impacts of over a decade of low-interest rates
• Whether there’s a correction in home prices on the horizon
• How Federal government policy from 100 years ago seeded the affordability crisis of today
• Why affordability is so difficult for the government to solve
• When the government should stimulate housing demand, and when they shouldn’t
• What today’s mortgage environment tells us about the risks of mortgage defaults
• Why the McMansion boom is the result of poor city planning
• What cities should know about fixing homelessness
• What he’s optimistic about in American housing in the next decade

Related to this episode:

• Connect with Ed on LinkedIn
• American Enterprise Institute
• Mike Simonsen on LinkedIn
• Altos Research

The Top of Mind Podcast is produced by Altos Research. Each week, Altos tracks every home for sale in the country – all the pricing, and all the changes in pricing – and synthesizes those analytics to make them available before becoming visible through traditional channels.