High-income job losses are cooling housing demand
55 comments
·December 1, 2025lvl155
Boston is seeing some headwind especially from slowdown in biotech, the main driver of growth over the past decade or so. Rents are also down. However, worth noting supply is still constrained especially if you exclude replacement-ready homes.
francisofascii
[delayed]
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mcdonje
But will lower demand coupled with still high interest rates actually lead to reduced housing prices?
bluGill
Somewhat, but remember that house prices are sticky. If I can't sell my house and get into one with a similar value (both price and features) with near net zero change in my debt and payments I'm likely to stay put. Of course once I decide to move I'll be looking at cheaper and more expensive places, but if I can't break even on a like for like move why would I move? I'll just ride this market out for another 10 years. (note too that my mortgage is less than 3% - one more reason moving anytime soon would be a terrible thing for my life)
If my house is worth less than what I owe then moving (selling short) can make sense.
Houses are not just an investment for most people. There are investment factors, but they are also the place you live. Thus most people cannot just sell or not - they also have to consider where will they live next if they sell. Even if I knew exactly where the bottom would be odds are I'd still not sell because I don't have options to live elsewhere.
toomuchtodo
~4M homes transacted in 2025. Price levels will decline over time, it's just who has to sell first. Life/forced sales (divorce, death, relo, downsize for costs, etc) are up first vs irrational sellers pining for look back price levels. Foreclosures are rising (especially in Florida), but not materially imho.
Delistings Jump 28% as Sellers Pull Homes Off Market Rather Than Settle For Low Prices - https://www.redfin.com/news/delistings-jump-sellers-pull-hom... - November 25th, 2025
Foreclosures Rise for 8th Straight Month—These States Have the Worst Rates - https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/foreclosure-increase-att... - November 14th, 2025
(real estate market participant)
fred_is_fred
> If my house is worth less than what I owe then moving (selling short) can make sense.
I believe this varies by state but I thought in some states the lender can come after you for the difference and in others you can just walk away (albeit with a credit ding).
toomuchtodo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonrecourse_debt
https://www.financialsamurai.com/non-recourse-states-walk-aw...
(have walked away from FHA mortgage, ama)
dr_kretyn
Talking from the Vancouver perspective where we have a similar situation - yes, house prices are going down. People list houses with the same price as 3-4 years ago but most close below the asking price.
ekjhgkejhgk
> But will lower demand coupled with still high interest rates actually lead to reduced housing prices?
One theory says that either lower employement causes lower demand and therefore lower interest rates OR lower employement causes the FED to lower interest rates to stimulate spending, and in EITHER case the response to your premise of "low employement + high interest rates" should be "interest rates will come down", and separately "low employment implies low demand implies house prices will come down".
etchalon
It has in several cities, including Austin, where I live.
ortusdux
Zillow publishes some interesting data:
TrainedMonkey
I feel like 50% of that is explained by the luxury housing build out bubble in Austin specifically.
etchalon
We just overbuilt everything. Condos, houses, etc. There's a lot of inventory no matter what type of housing you're looking for.
harmmonica
A drop in housing prices might be the only silver lining if an actual recession hits (whether the official statistics will actually admit to a recession is debatable of course).
That said, even if housing prices drop materially and eventually bottom it will provide little opportunity for "normal" folks to buy in if they're jobless. Will be interesting to see if Fed interest rate cuts translate to mortgage rate cuts, and whether those rate cuts lessen any price drops.
I've said this before on here, but the historical price-to-income for housing has been something like 4x. Today it's 7x (that is as insane as it sounds). A long way to revert to the mean unless you really think "this time is different."
al_borland
Housing prices dropping aren’t so good for those who own homes. It is also likely there will be a feeding frenzy of investors snatching up homes. I had a hard time buying a few years ago, because investors kept out-bidding me with all-cash offers. I had to raise my price target to move outside of their impulse buy range, which I was not too happy about.
mcny
What I am worried about is won't building new homes slow down to a crawl or stop completely if the r word is confirmed?
jfghi
I think with the amount of corporations and existing homeowners buying homes that the demand is strong enough to keep prices high no matter what happens. There are billions of dollars set aside to gobble up homes in the event of a price drop. In my area, 20 percent of homes are owned by investors and realtors delist homes that don’t sell as opposed to drop price.
rockskon
It's 7x these days largely due to the 0% interest rate environment we had for so long.
standardUser
Desirable metros seem to have very sticky prices. San Francisco, where I lived for 15 years, turned into a grotesque caricature of what it once was, but prices barely budged (and for most of that transition, they surged wildly). Sure, it's no longer the single most expensive rental market in the country, but it's still one of the highest despite quality of life degrading massively and even a big decline in population.
monkeydust
Any evidence if this is global trend in developed countries?
nemomarx
All of the examples in the article seem to be the us, so I think they're only looking at local trends.
Are other developed countries firing people in the same way rn?
georgeburdell
Anecdotally, in my corner of the Silicon Valley, I've been looking to trade up homes from my 7/10 district to a nearby 10/10. Over the last year, I've seen the comparable properties in 10/10's rise about 10%, while my 7/10 has gone down about 5%. Both areas are very short commutes to high tech.
potato3732842
The illustration is misleading because it forces things into three buckets, two of which are colored to indicate "not good". But still, that bottom right corner of the graph is telling.
Also pretty disgusting to me that healthcare is "growing faster than normal" across the board. You'd think it'd be "growing the normal rate" at least somewhere. It's not like population is growing faster than normal across the board. Isn't 20% of the GDP enough for an industry that's fundamentally a cost center of society? Wars have been fought over less.
trollbridge
An aging population combined with people generally being a lot less healthy (eg look at obesity or diabetes rates) means we either let people die off, or else spend more and more on healthcare.
bluGill
The large baby boomer generation is getting old, and thus their costs will go up just by nature of old people needing more. They are also realizing that health is the largest factor in how long they will live (not to mention that they likely started smoking before people realized how harmful it was - most have long quit but with unknown damage done. There are other choices that they often made that are now questionable)
Which is to say I expect spending to go up just for demographic reasons of large numbers of people starting to care. Don't confuse this for thinking all is well with health care costs.
bell-cot
Healthcare is a non-negotiable way to extract money from people. And the industry is swimming in opaque complexities, IP, monopolies, monopsonies, and sweetheart regulation. Why the h*ll should they limit themselves to a mere 20%?
doctorpangloss
What’s the maximum price you’d pay for a cure to a rare, fatal pediatric disease?
Answer this question, and you’re on the journey to the solution to the problem you are talking about. Tell me some BS why the question doesn’t matter or is wrong or whatever, and discover why “Dunning Kruger” is at least part of the answer.
Spivak
From experience from my peers getting pregnant it's the cost of a "selective reduction" (which can be 1 to 0). Newly pregnant friends are spending $$$ on tests in utero to weed out children with such things.
potato3732842
>Answer this question, and you’re on the journey to the solution to the problem you are talking about. Tell me some BS why the question doesn’t matter or is wrong or whatever, and discover why “Dunning Kruger” is at least part of the answer.
I posit that the people who hold an ideology, moral compass, world view, or whatever else you want to call it, that permits the question to even be framed in this way are a root problem exacerbating many other problems in society, healthcare likely being one.
I don't know what the "solution" is but the fact that ~1:5 dollars in this country is spent on maintenance of the human body is just wild and likely unsustainable or indicative of some gross error in how we measure such things.
lapcat
It's curious that the article combines education and health care into one category. I suspect that most of the growth is coming from the health care side.
On the other hand, a quick search suggests that the growth in government jobs is mainly in education at the state and local level. Does anyone have further insight into that?
engineer_22
We're in a recession.
QuercusMax
I saw HUGE ramen displays yesterday at Safeway, including some of the less common flavors like blue (Soy Sauce, formerly "Oriental") and yellow (Creamy Chicken).
I can't find the blog post from the last major recession where people were talking about all the crazy flavors you only see when the economy is REAL bad.
bluedino
I was always taking noodle bowls to work. Fill with water, microwave, enjoy at my desk. A dollar or two.
Couldn't believe how many people would go to the sushi restaurant at the base of the building and spend $25 on lunch a couple days a week. Yikes.
kulahan
It's not nearly as filling, but I saw a character on TV smashing up their noodles and pouring in the powder, shaking the bag, and eating them like popcorn. I've become incredibly addicted.
foogazi
> Fill with water, microwave, enjoy at my desk
Getting lunch with coworkers once in a while doesn’t hurt
sph
Wheat in a watery soup flavoured with monosodium glutamate isn't very nutritious compared to rice and fresh fish. There's a reason ramen costs a dollar or two compared to sushi.
ssl-3
"Hey, I heard you like eating sushi. Have you ever tried having a bowl of par-cooked microwaved noodles, instead? It's basically the same thing!"
gruez
Are you sure they're not trying to capitalize on the ramen craze from kpop demon hunters?
pinkmuffinere
Someone please tell the stock market, I moved my investments to be more risk averse and it hurts to watch the green line go up.
thatfrenchguy
There is generally no point in doing this, keep a constant asset allocation that match your risk appetite, otherwise you're just playing the casino.
anonymars
They say time in the market generally beats timing the market
outside1234
The market can stay insane longer than you can stay insolvent.
Also, its possible that the market thinks job losses are good (aka that AI is replacing jobs)
reactordev
The brutal truth…
Stocks go up, wages and income go down, things keep on keeping on because AI has quietly replaced you.
wetpaws
[dead]
rvz
We were already in one following the tech correction since Nov 2021. [0]
The problem here is some waited for too long to be told we are now in a recession, then some politicians tried to redefine it.
But that is nothing compared to what will happen in the next 5 - 10 years. Nothing goes up forever. The only hint is that we need to prepare before 2030.
micromacrofoot
objectively we're not yet, but things are certainly weird
andrewstuart2
Objectively, I'm not sure we can reliably say any longer, given how much pressure has been put on formerly objective reporting agencies to conform to this administration's narrative.
mistrial9
bifurcation, and more
Can confirm via my own experiences. Had a job in a SV firm, and paid just barely enough to try and get on the housing ladder. Four years and a 40-60% price increase later, and I got laid off without managing to successfully buy a home.
Since the layoffs, I’ve taken a sizable paycut (~$75k TC) to make ends meet with whatever I could find, but kept a pulse on the market in case things turned around. Locally, rents have gone down by ~$100-$500 a month (depending on when you renew) with one to two months free rent, while home prices have finally stopped rising. Homes are staying on markets longer, and bidding wars have dried up. I get about one to three price cut messages a day from Redfin, though nothing in my area or price range post salary cut.
Unfortunately, I don’t expect this trend to continue. My landlord just introduced a new RealPage-alike to keep rents high, local developers have put a hold on new housing construction as resources get consumed for AI datacenters, and the same old red tape blocks meaningful progress in addressing availability gaps. The only real bright spot is that renters are pushing for statewide rent caps and controls with better progress than ever before, so there might be some relief in sight next election.
It’s bad out there, ya’ll.