Three Housing Charts You NEED To Monitor

The Macro Institute's Weekly Economic Primer

Author

The Macro Institute
April 06, 2026

In partnership with

(If you’re enjoying the videos, we would really appreciate it if you could take a second to watch it and “Like” it on YouTube. It helps our content reach more and more people! Thank you!)

Don’t have time to watch the whole video? Here’s 5 Key Takeaways:

🔹 Home Sellers Currently Outnumber Home Buyers: According to estimates, the number of people trying to sell their house is currently much higher than the number of people looking to buy a house.

🔹 Housing Does Not Have Typical Supply & Demand Dynamics: According to traditional supply and demand dynamics, you would expect home prices to fall if more people were looking to sell their home than are looking to buy a home. However, housing is a rare exception.

🔹 The Housing Market Has Behavioral Components: Home sellers fall victim to many behavioral biases. Two prominent ones are loss aversion and anchoring bias. Studies have shown that home sellers are highly unlikely to sell their house for less than the purchase price, regardless of home’s market price.

🔹 Existing Homes Are Selling For More Than New Homes: One area that has shown clear signs of these behavioral components is the price of existing homes. Generally, the price of new homes sold should be greater than the price of existing homes sold, but that is currently not the case.

🔹 The End Of The “Lock-In Effect” On The Horizon?: The number of outstanding mortgages with an interest rate above 6% recently passed the number of outstanding mortgages below 3%. This could lead to more action in the housing market, as less homeowners are “locked in” to their low-rate mortgages.

Miss our last few videos? No worries. Here are some of the most popular 👇

Unlock The Skill Of Macro Investing

How should you react to oil prices spiking? What are the investment implications of reduced immigration? What about a more restrictive trade policy?

The world is moving fast. 

Francois Trahan’s macro investment framework can help slow things down.

We condensed the same framework he has used over his 30+ year career working on Wall Street into an online Macro Investing Bootcamp.

Learn how to find signal in the noise and simplify today’s complicated economic backdrop.

Macro Data Center

AUM Doesn’t Grow in Your Inbox

Your highest-value work is advising, not administrating. But many advisors still spend too much time in their inbox, coordinating details, chasing tasks, and keeping operations moving. That is not just frustrating, it is expensive. BELAY’s free Financial Advisor’s Delegation Guide helps you spot where time is leaking, where support would help most, and how smarter delegation can free you up for clients, strategy, and revenue-generating work.

The Macro Week Ahead

📆 Last Week’s Data Key Takeaways

🔹 ISM Accelerated While S&P Manufacturing Held: The ISM Manufacturing Index rose to 52.7 in March (vs 52.3 forecast), the fastest expansion since August 2022 and the third straight month above 50. However, prices paid remained extremely elevated. The S&P Global Manufacturing PMI came in at 52.3, up from 51.6, with new orders at a five-month high and export demand stabilizing.

🔹 Payrolls Rebounded, But Revisions Told Different Story: March payrolls came in at +117,000, a solid rebound from February's sharply revised -133,000. Unemployment held at 4.4%, while average hourly earnings rose just +0.2% M/M (vs +0.3% forecast), which cooled the Y/Y pace to +3.5%.

🔹 Retail Sales Bounced, But Confidence Was Mixed: February retail sales rose +0.6% (vs +0.5%), rebounding from January's -0.1%. Consumer Conference edged up to 91.8 from 91.0. Inflation expectations surged to their highest since August 2025, and the share expecting higher interest rates jumped from 34.9% to 42.4%.

🔹 Case-Shiller & FHFA Showed Continued Cooling: The FHFA rose +0.07% to a new record of 441.0, but appreciation remains subdued. Case-Shiller data for January continued to show the geographic divergence. The Midwest and Northeast are outperforming, as Sun Belt markets still correcting. Real home values remain negative after inflation outpaced price growth throughout the second half of 2025.

🔹 ADP Firmed & JOLTS Showed Resilient Demand: ADP reported +62,000 private jobs in March (vs +40K forecast), extending February's upwardly revised +66,000. February JOLTS came in near 6.95M openings, suggesting employers are still posting positions even as actual hiring remains subdued. The gap between openings and hires continues to reflect the "low-hire, low-fire" dynamic.

Macro Job Board

This role will join a global team of experienced strategists and editors who combine sophisticated macro analysis, speed and news judgment to deliver a 24/7, real-time product. They will construct frameworks to translate the most pertinent themes into actionable insights across asset classes.

This role will focus on execution of orders across a global book of business with an emphasis on Foreign Exchange (FX), Global Rates, or Commodities. This is an execution role, but there is significant opportunity and expectation to add value to client portfolios through collaboration with portfolio managers and analysts.

This role will work closely with the Senior Portfolio Manager to develop systematic macro strategies, focusing on alpha research, including idea generation, statistical analysis, back testing, and implementation. Must independently explore and develop new ideas while collaborating in a team-oriented environment.

What We Read This Weekend