Data Explorer: Rent Burden in the US

How to fight big financial landlords

The role of big finance in housing has been getting a lot of attention lately. TikTokers made a big scare and convinced a lot of people that 40% of single-family homes are owned by private equity companies, which is not even close to being true. This turned out to be

Are landlords profiting by keeping units vacant?

Many people, myself included, think that finance has some important role in why the rent is so damn high. There is a growing "housing financialization" literature about this. The idea is that banks, investors, and other financial actors are driving up home and rent prices. This was a

Low-income wage gains are an illusion—blame the rent

Update 7/25/2025: Since publishing this, I realized that I wasn't controlling for underemployment. The results shown here should not be taken at face value. There may have been an increase in the share of people who are underemployed but have no other income than wages. This

The Collapse of Housing Affordability

Housing has gotten much more expensive in the last half century. We can learn a lot about how the rental market works by looking at who has borne that burden.