Thank you, Chairman Scott and ranking member Warren. Thank you, committee members. I am grateful
and honored to have the opportunity to speak to you today.

I am an economist who has spent much of the last quarter-century studying what has gone wrong with
America’s housing markets.

Initially, I worried mainly about the high costs and limited housing supply in coastal America, because I watched as the inflation-adjusted cost of housing in greater Boston tripled between 1980 and 2006.
But until the past decade, the cost of housing in cites like Atlanta, Dallas and Houston remained
affordable – largely because these sunbelt cites built a lot of homes.

That has changed. Between the end of 2009 and the end of 2024, the real price of housing doubled in
Phoenix and rose by 55 percent in Atlanta. According to the National Associaon of Realtors, the
median new home price in now $635,000 in Miami, $476,000 in Phoenix and $450,000 in Charleston,
South Carolina.

Read the full testimony here.

Watch the full hearing here.