Low Rates and Limited Liability Mean Hot Markets

by Doug French
Mises.org

What clear-eyed mortgage underwriter would sign on to a thirty-year loan at less than 3 percent? After all, in Las Vegas, for instance, the unemployment rate in November was 11.5 percent, second highest in the country. The city’s main engine, tourism, has been stymied by covid. But, as if there were nothing wrong, nothing to see, or no risks to consider, new home sales are on the verge of being the highest in 2020 since the historic housing-boom year of 2007.

“Heading into the final month of 2020, the housing market in Southern Nevada continues to impress and defy normal seasonal trends,” Smith wrote in the Home Builders Research monthly report cited by Eli Segall in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “Despite the continuing uncertainty of the pandemic, low interest rates and low inventory have kept both new and resale homes moving at unprecedented levels for this time of year.”

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