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cover of episode Jim Egan on the Mortgage Gap That's Dividing America

Jim Egan on the Mortgage Gap That's Dividing America

2025/6/16
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Odd Lots
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J
Jim Egan
J
Joe Weisenthal
通过播客和新闻工作，提供深入的经济分析和市场趋势解读。
T
Traci Alloway
Topics
Traci Alloway: 我观察到关于美国消费者健康状况的讨论持续不断。尽管存在一些负面指标，例如消费者债务处于历史高位和消费者信心调查结果不佳，但消费者仍在继续消费和购买房屋。 Joe Weisenthal: 我也注意到，尽管消费者信心数据不佳，但公司表现尚可，但经济中存在疲软领域，例如房屋库存正在上升。高利率正在对经济产生影响，但这并不是一个线性下降的故事。我担心经济可能正在开始恶化。

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Despite negative sentiment surveys and record-high consumer debt, American consumers continue spending. Low unemployment and wealth growth, particularly in home equity and financial assets, contribute to this resilience. While debt service ratios are rising, they remain historically low, suggesting overall consumer balance sheets remain healthy.
  • Consumer debt at record high but spending remains strong
  • Low unemployment rate (4.2%)
  • Significant wealth growth in home equity and financial assets
  • Debt service ratios above 2021 levels but still historically low

Shownotes Transcript

Somehow, the American consumer remains quite strong. Despite higher interest rates, tariffs, general economic uncertainty and so forth, people are continuing to spend. And yet there are some pockets of weakness that you can observe, especially if you look at delinquency data for various types of credit. But even here the patterns aren’t totally obvious, as it doesn’t break down nicely among prime vs. non-prime borrowers. But there is one important divide: Do you have a ZIRP-era mortgage or not? According to Morgan Stanley housing strategist Jim Egan, there is a massive difference in how strained people are for those who locked in their housing costs prior to 2021 vs. those who didn’t. People with ZIRP-era mortgages are benefiting from low stable payments (which have declined on a real basis), as well as broad equity accumulation. Those who didn’t are much more strained in their finances. We discuss how this is playing out, as well as the state of the housing market more broadly, which has seen rising inventories, and the possibility for an overall downturn in prices nationwide.

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