The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act cleared the Senate 85-5 and the House 358-32. Those are numbers you don’t see in Washington anymore. And for a moment, it looked like the country was finally getting its first serious housing legislation since Ronald Reagan was in office. On Wednesday morning, the White House announced the...
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Ken McElroy’s Real Estate Edge
Direct from the desk of Ken McElroy! Your trusted source for up-to-date real estate insights, financial literacy, and actionable investing solutions.
Inflation has been the big story for 5 years. But something is quietly replacing it as the thing Americans are most worried about. Polls now show more people are afraid of losing their job than they are of rising prices. And that shift matters a lot more than most people realize. Here’s the thing about...
Thirty years. Roughly $2 billion in assets. About 10,000 apartment units across the western U.S. When someone with that kind of track record says a window is opening, it’s worth paying attention. And right now, that window is open. How we got here In 2021, money was almost free. Mortgage rates sat below 3%, and...
Every investor wants to know what happens next. Will mortgage rates fall? Is a recession coming? Are home prices going up or down? Which markets will outperform? These questions dominate headlines, podcasts, and social media because predicting the future feels like an advantage. But after decades of investing, many of the most successful real estate...
For years, real estate investors focused on the usual drivers of returns: rent growth, occupancy, financing costs, and property appreciation. Insurance was often treated as a predictable operating expense—a line item that rarely received much attention during underwriting. That assumption no longer holds true. In 2026, insurance costs have become one of the fastest-growing expenses...
The Federal Reserve made headlines this week, and not because they cut rates. In fact, they didn’t cut anything. But what happened at Chairman Kevin Warsh’s first Fed meeting on Wednesday may be one of the most important shifts in how America’s central bank operates in over a decade. The message was clear: the rules...
For the last several years, real estate investors, homebuyers, and economists have all focused on one question: when mortgage rates finally come down, will housing demand return? The conventional wisdom has been straightforward. Higher rates reduced affordability, sidelined buyers, and slowed transaction activity. Therefore, lower rates should naturally bring demand back into the market. But...
It’s Not What You Earn, It’s What You Own
June 11, 20260
There’s a story that explains more about wealth in America than most economic reports combined. A house bought in the 1960s for $10,700. The buyer wasn’t an investor. Just someone who lived in it, maintained it, and let time do the rest. Today that house is worth around $750,000, and it’s now paying for assisted...
Why your boss’s raise request might be more dangerous than it sounds In the early 1970s, something strange started happening in America. Workers asked for raises not because their bosses were suddenly generous, but because everyone just knew prices were going up next year anyway. So businesses gave the raises. Then they raised prices to...
Most landlords think real estate is passive. Buy a property, collect rent, done. Then a tenant smoking with an oxygen tank blows out an apartment, sending fire through 17 units. Or a family unfamiliar with US kitchens cuts a hole in the floor to build a charcoal pit, and a different property loses 35 units...
