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Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. During the Pandemic Housing Boom, housing demand surged rapidly amid ultralow interest rates, stimulus, and the remote work boomwhich increased demand for space and unlocked WFH arbitrage as high earners were able to keep their income from a job in say, NYC or L.A., and buy in say Austin or Tampa. Federal Reserve researchers estimate new construction would have had to increase by roughly 300% to absorb the pandemic-era surge in demand. Unlike housing demand, housing stock supply isnt as elastic and can’t ramp up as quickly. As a result, the heightened pandemic era demand drained the market of active inventory and overheated home prices, with U.S. home prices rising a staggering 43.2% between March 2020 and June 2022. While many commentators view active inventory and months of supply simply as measures of supply, ResiClub sees them more as proxies for the supply-demand equilibrium. Because housing demand is more elastic than housing stock, large swings in active inventory or months of supply are usually driven by shifts in demand. For example, during the Pandemic Housing Boom, surging demand caused homes to sell fasterpushing active inventory down, even as new listings remained steady. Conversely, in recent years, weakening demand has led to slower sales, causing active inventory to riseeven as new listings fell below trend. Indeed, during the ravenous housing demand at the height of the Pandemic Housing Boom in April 2022, almost the entire country was at least -50% below pre-pandemic 2019 active inventory levels. BROWN = Active housing inventory for sale in April 2022 was BELOW pre-pandemic 2019 levels GREEN = Active housing inventory for sale in April 2022 was ABOVE pre-pandemic 2019 levels Of course, now its a different picture: National active inventory is on a multiyear rise. Not long after mortgage rates spiked in 2022causing affordability to reflect the reality of the sharp home price increases during the Pandemic Housing Boomand return-to-office gained a bit of momentum, national demand in the for-sale market pulled back and the Pandemic Housing Boom fizzled out. Initially, in the second half of 2022, that housing demand pullback triggered a “fever breaking” in a number of marketsparticularly in rate-sensitive West Coast housing markets and in pandemic boomtowns like Austin and Boisecausing active inventory to spike and pushing those markets into correction-mode in the second half of 2022. Heading into 2023, many of those same Western and pandemic boomtown markets (excluding Austin) stabilized, as the spring seasonal demandcoupled with still-tight active inventory levelswas enough to temporarily firm up the market. For a bit, national active inventory stopped rising year-over-year. However, that period of national inventory stabilization didnt last. Amid still slumped housing demand, national active inventory began to rise againand were now in the midst of an 18-month streak of year-over-year increases in national active listings. Where active inventory/months of supply has risen the most, homebuyers have gained the most leverage. Generally speaking, housing markets where inventory (i.e., active listings) has returned to pre-pandemic 2019 levels have experienced weaker home price growth (or outright declines) over the past 34 months. Conversely, housing markets where inventory remains far below pre-pandemic 2019 levels have, generally speaking, experienced stronger home price growth over the past 34 months. BROWN = Active housing inventory for sale in April 2025 was BELOW pre-pandemic 2019 levels GREEN = Active housing inventory for sale in April 2025 was ABOVE pre-pandemic 2019 levels As ResiClub has closely documented, that picture varies significantly across the country: much of the Northeast and Midwest remain below pre-pandemic 2019 inventory levels, while many parts of the Mountain West and Gulf regions have bounced back. Many of the softest housing markets, where homebuyers have gained leverage, are located in Gulf Coast and Mountain West regions. These areas were among the nations top pandemic boomtowns, having experienced significant home price growth during the Pandemic Housing Boom, which stretched housing fundamentals far beyond local income levels. When pandemic-fueled domestic migration slowed and mortgage rates spiked, markets like Cape Coral, Florida, and San Antonio, Texas, faced challenges as they had to rely on local incomes to sustain frothy home prices. The housing market softening in these areas was further accelerated by higher levels of new home supply in the pipeline across the Sun Belt. Builders in these regions are often willing to reduce prices or make other affordability adjustments to maintain sales in a shifted environment. These adjustments in the new construction market also create a cooling effect on the resale market, as some buyers who might have opted for an existing home shift their focus to new homes where eals are still available. In contrast, many Northeast and Midwest markets were less reliant on pandemic migration and have less new home construction in progress. With lower exposure to that domestic migration pullback demand shockand fewer builders doing big affordability adjustments to move productactive inventory in these Midwest and Northeast regions has remained relatively tightwith home sellers retaining more power relative to their peers in the Gulf and Mountain West regions. While national active inventory at the end of April 2025 was still -16% below pre-pandemic April 2019, ResiClub expects national active inventory to surpass pre-pandemic 2019 levels later this year. Big picture: The housing market is still undergoing a process of normalization following the surge in housing demand during the Pandemic Housing Boom, when home prices went up too fast, too quickly. To date, that normalization process has pushed some marketsincluding Austin (mid-2022-present), Las Vegas (second half of 2022), Phoenix (second half of 2022), San Francisco (second half of 2022), Boise (mid-20222023), Punta Gorda (2022present), Cape Coral (2023present), and Tampa (2024present)into correction-mode. In some other areas, so far, it has caused home price growth to stall out. Meanwhile, some markets still remain tight and have only seen a deceleration in home price growth from the highs of the Pandemic Housing Boom. ResiClub PRO members can access my latest monthly inventory analysis (+800 metros and +3,000 counties) here, and my latest monthly home price analysis (+800 metros and +3,000 counties) here.
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The headlines scream it daily: Markets are fluctuating wildly, AI is transforming entire industries overnight, supply chains are fracturing, and the workforce is reshuffling at unprecedented rates. According to the World Economic Forum, 78 million new job opportunities will emerge by 2030, but this comes amid massive workforce transformation, with 77% of employers planning upskilling initiatives while 41% anticipate reductions due to AI automation. All these moving parts are playing out against a global background of financial insecurity, war, climate change, and political disruption. The age of anxiety Welcome to the age of VUCAvolatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguitya concept adopted by the military to describe post-Cold War conditions but now perfectly capturing our business landscape. And here’s the brutal truth. We’re facing this unprecedented VUCA while collectively and perfectly depleted from the trauma of the past five years. A recent American Psychiatric Association survey reveals that 43% of U.S. adults feel more anxious than they did the previous year, with 70% particularly anxious about current events. Research from meQ also finds that depression and anxiety rates are more than four times higher for people who feel least prepared for change. This isn’t another challenging period to weather. Chaotic change isnt a bug in the code we can just rewrite. It’s a fundamental feature of our era, requiring a complete reinvention of our relationship with change itself. Why the U in VUCA Hurts So Much Right Now In a word, trauma. The pandemic threw us into societal trauma at a level few of us had ever known. Unlike normal adversity, where mental health improves once the challenge passes, the pandemic created persistent mental health issues that have worsened even after the acute phases passed. When it comes to mental health, trauma has a long tail. The pandemic delivered a perfect storm of traumatic conditions: Chronic and unrelenting. Rather than a sharp, short crisis, it dragged on with no clear endpoint. Pervasive impact. It transformed every aspect of life simultaneouslywork, relationships, health, finances. Global with no escape. You couldn’t get on a plane to avoid it. Beyond our control. Individual actions had minimal impact on the overall trajectory. Shifting goalposts. Vaccines were promised, then delayed; variants emerged; reopenings were followed by new lockdowns. Aversion to Uncertainty This roller coaster of false hope and disappointment forced us to experience unrelenting uncertainty, and even in good times, our brains hate uncertainty. In a 2016 University College London study, people experienced more stress and anxiety when facing a 50/50 chance of receiving an electric shock than when facing a 98% certainty of receiving that same shock. Uncertainty was more unbearable than guaranteed pain. This preference made evolutionary sense when stability increased the chance of survival. In today’s business environment, it’s a dangerous liability. The fight-flight-freeze responses that helped our ancestors survive short periods of uncertainty now paralyze us in boardrooms, strategy sessions, and daily decision-making. We are not yet equipped to handle the ongoing uncertainty of todays nonstop change. The New Approach to Change I often describe our current relationship to change as abusive. Another disruption shakes us off course, and we think “this time will be different,” but it never is. The resulting uncertainty plagues us as much as before, because we haven’t changed our approach. Transforming our ingrained fear of uncertainty requires a process that rewrites our own relationship with change. We are then empowered to lead our teams and organizations through this era of VUCA without end. Step 1: Reject our old-fashioned beliefs about uncertainty and change We all have deep-seated beliefs about how the world should work. I call these Iceberg Beliefs because theyre enormous and largely lie beneath the surface of our awareness. They often define how we react to change. Classic beliefs about change and uncertainty might sound like: If I keep my head down and work hard, certainty should be my reward. “Uncertainty is unbearable and unfair.” The more control I get, the better my life will be. Steady as she goes wins the race. Change is frightening. It should be resisted or ignored. We have to discard these beliefs. For one, theyre not accurate. While hard work helps achieve our goals, it brings no guarantee of certainty or constancy. Second, they frame VUCA in a way thats not useful. VUCA is happening to us all, and fair has nothing to do with it. These beliefs push us to waste our time and energy fighting for an illusion of certainty that will never come. We must reject these naive Icebergs and replace them with beliefs that reflect reality and point to a path ahead. Step 2: Reinvent and reimagine our beliefs about uncertainty and change Reinventing our relationship with change means rejecting old and tired thinking and constructing new belief systems. We can ease into this by first endorsing beliefs that get us more comfortable with change. Not all uncertainty ends badly. There have been college applications, new jobs, and reorgs that turned out well. Ive been through change before, and most of the terrible stuff I worried about at 3 a.m. every night didnt actually happen. I am powerless to change change, but I alone have the power to change my relationship with it. Next, we can finally turn the tables on this abusive relationship by edging toward embracing change. Well get there with beliefs like there is no growth without change” and every change brings opportunity. We can also recognize that some of life’s most exhilarating momentsfalling in love, becoming a parent, getting a promotion, starting a new ventureinvolve profound uncertainty and change. Part of this work must include recalibrating our sense of what is under our control and mapping our sphere of control daily. Trauma distorts our sense of what we can and cannot influence. For example, during the pandemic, I found myself obsessively worrying about my elderly parents’ health in Australiasomething I had limited control overwhile neglecting my children’s online education happening right in front of me. I was systematically failing to control what Icould because I was exhausted trying to control what I couldn’t. Step 3: Lead your people through change With the threat of uncertainty neutralized and our beliefs about change and control starting to shift, we turn attention outward. How can we react to disruption more productively? And how can we successfully lead the people who count on us through VUCA? Practice a growth mindset These habits of mind help us see opportunities and stay focused through chaotic disruption. As leaders, we shift our teams response to change when we approach challenges with principles such as: Abandoning perfectionism. Accepting inevitable mistakes. Reframing mistakes as progress to value. Encouraging creativity without judgment. We can also educate our managers in this new approach to change, and help them learn to coach their teams to do the same. When this training happens at scale, our entire workforce is much more equipped to navigate and accelerate through organizational changes. Adjust work to the demands of VUCA We cant lead like business as usual when VUCA rules. However, with our greater resilience in the face of change, we can skillfully shift workplace expectations and norms to reduce VUCAs impact, thereby protecting growth and well-being as changes unfold. Reduce Volatile Processes. Slow processes down when possible. External forces put a ceiling on how much volatility you can control, but even small reductions help. The greatest athletes visualize the game in slow motion, while they respond in real time. Deal with one thing at a time rather than everything simultaneously. Reduce Uncertain Outcomes. While you can’t eliminate uncertainty, take actions today that narrow the field of possible outcomes. Thats why we try to exercise and eat healthfully. While never a guarantee that well dodge illness, it renders that uncertainty small enough to set aside for now. Reduce Complex Problems. Break problems into smaller pieces. Think of untangling yarnstart with one strand, simplify it, then move to the next. Organizations like NASA excel at this approach, breaking seemingly impossible challenges into manageable components. Reduce Ambiguous Information with Clarity. The U in VUCA is future-directed, while the Aambiguityis happening now. During change, people will fill information gaps with their Icebergs and fears. In my research, organizations that fare better during VUCA have transparency of process and open information. Its widely held in military circles that in a battle, communication is often the first thing to fail. By the time an organization is in VUCA, its too late to develop lines of communication. Work now, preemptively, to build strategies to keep your people informed. The payoff is clear. Research at meQ shows that most change-ready, resilient, and supported employees are significantly VUCA-proofed, with rates of depression, anxiety, and burnout slashed by around 75% when compared with their less change-ready peers. Taking the Power Back from Change The ultimate reality? Periods of stability will become increasingly rare. The concept that we just need to get through this “liminal time” before returning to normal is outdated. It’s the brief periods of stability that are now liminalunusual spaces between the predominant times of change, turmoil, and flux. Those who can adapt internally rather than demanding external stability will be best positioned to thrive. The pursuit of stability is a fool’s errand, and what we’re chasing is fool’s gold. The only thing at stake is this: Our entire mental health, wellness, happiness, productivity, and performance. It’s time to take back the power in our relationship with change.
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E-Commerce
As summer approaches, millions of Americans begin planning or taking trips to state and national parks, seeking to explore the wide range of outdoor recreational opportunities across the nation. A lot of them will head toward the nations wilderness areas110 million acres, mostly in the West, that are protected by the strictest federal conservation rules. When Congress passed the Wilderness Act in 1964, it described wilderness areas as places that evoked mystery and wonder, where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain. These are wild landscapes that present nature in its rawest form. The law requires the federal government to protect these areas for the permanent good of the whole people. Wilderness areas are found in national parks, conservation land overseen by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, national forests and U.S. Fish and Wildlife refuges. In early May 2025, the U.S. House of Representatives began to consider allowing the sale of federal lands in six counties in Nevada and Utah, five of which contain wilderness areas. Ostensibly, these sales are to promote affordable housing, but the reality is that the proposal, introduced by U.S. Rep. Mark Amodei, a Nevada Republican, is a departure from the standard process of federal land exchanges that accommodate development in some places but protect wilderness in others. Regardless of whether Americans visit their public lands or know when they have crossed a wilderness boundary, as environmental historians we believe that everyone still benefits from the existence and protection of these precious places. This belief is an idea eloquently articulated and popularized 65 years ago by the noted Western writer Wallace Stegner. His eloquence helped launch the modern environmental movement and gave power to the idea that the nations public lands are a fundamental part of the United States national identity and a cornerstone of American freedom. var divElement = document.getElementById('viz1747405934583'); var vizElement = divElement.getElementsByTagName('object')[0]; if ( divElement.offsetWidth > 800 ) { vizElement.style.width='100%';vizElement.style.height=(divElement.offsetWidth*0.75)+'px';} else if ( divElement.offsetWidth > 500 ) { vizElement.style.width='100%';vizElement.style.height=(divElement.offsetWidth*0.75)+'px';} else { vizElement.style.width='100%';vizElement.style.height='777px';} var scriptElement = document.createElement('script'); scriptElement.src = 'https://public.tableau.com/javascripts/api/viz_v1.js'; vizElement.parentNode.insertBefore(scriptElement, vizElement); Humble origins In 1958, Congress established the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission to examine outdoor recreation in the U.S. in order to determine not only what Americans wanted from the outdoors, but to consider how those needs and desires might change decades into the future. One of the commissions members was David E. Pesonen, who worked at the Wildland Research Center at the University of California at Berkeley. He was asked to examine wilderness and its relationship to outdoor recreation. Pesonen later became a notable environmental lawyer and leader of the Sierra Club. But at the time, Pesonen had no idea what to say about wilderness. However, he knew someone who did. Pesonen had been impressed by the wild landscapes of the American West in Stegners 1954 history Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West. So he wrote to Stegner, who at the time was at Stanford University, asking for help in articulating the wilderness idea. Stegners response, which he said later was written in a single afternoon, was an off-the-cuff riff on why he cared about preserving wildlands. This letter became known as the Wilderness Letter and marked a turning point in American political and conservation history. Pesonen shared the letter with the rest of the commission, which also shared it with newly installed Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall. Udall found its prose to be so profound, he read it at the seventh Wilderness Conference in 1961 in San Francisco, a speech broadcast by KCBS, the local FM radio station. The Sierra Club published the letter in the record of the conferences proceedings later that year. But it was not until its publication in The Washington Post on June 17, 1962, that the letter reached a national audience and captured the imagination of generations of Americans. Wallace Stegner, right, knew the power of American wilderness landscapes. In this photo, probably from the 1950s, he pauses with his son Page and wife, Mary, on a Yosemite National Park hiking trail. [Photo: Multimedia Archives, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah] An eloquent appeal In the letter, Stegner connected the idea of wilderness to a fundamental part of American identity. He called wilderness something that has helped form our character and that has certainly shaped our history as a people . . . the challenge against which our character as a people was formed . . . (and) the thing that has helped to make an American different from and, until we forget it in the roar of our industrial cities, more fortunate than other men. Without wild places, he argued, the U.S. would be just like every other overindustrialized place in the world. In the letter, Stegner expressed little concern with how wilderness might support outdoor recreation on public lands. He didnt care whether wilderness areas had once featured roads, trails, homesteads or even natural resource extraction. What he cared about was Americans freedom to protect and enjoy these places. Stegner recognized that the freedom to protect, to restrain ourselves from consuming, was just as important as the freedom to consume. Perhaps most importantly, he wrote, wilderness was an intangible and spiritual resource, a place that gave the nation our hope and our excitement, landscapes that were good for our spiritual health even if we never once in ten years set foot in it. Without it, Stegner lamented, never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste. To him, the nations natural cathedrals and the vaulted ceiling of the pure blue sky are Americans sacred spaces as much as the structures in which they worship on the weekends. Stegner penned the letter during a national debate about the value of preserving wild places in the face of future development. Something will have gone out of us as a people, he wrote, if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed. If not protected, Stegner believed these wildlands that had helped shape American identity would fall to what he viewed as the same exploitative forces of unrestrained capitalism that had industrialized the nation for the past century. Every generation since has an obligation to protect these wild places. Stegners Wilderness Letter became a rallying cry to pass the Wilderness Act. The closing sentences of the letter are Stegners best: We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope. This phrase, the geography of hope, is Stegners most famous line. It has become shorthand for what wilderness means: the wildlands that defined American character on the Western frontier, the wild spaces that Americans have had the freedom to protect, and the natural places that give Americans hope for the future of this planet. Death Valley National Park in California contains one of the largest protected wilderness areas in the United States. [Photo: National Park Service/E. Letterman] Americas best idea Stegner returned to themes outlined in the Wilderness Letter again two decades later in his essay The Best Idea We Ever Had: An Overview, published in Wilderness magazine in spring 1983. Writing in response to the Reagan administrations efforts to reduce protection of the National Park System, Stegner declared that the parks were Absolutely American, absolutely democratic. He said they reflect us as a nation, at our best rather than our worst, and without them, millions of Americans lives, his included, would have been poorer. Public lands are more than just wilderness or national parks. They are places for work and play. They provide natural resources, wildlife habitat, clean air, clean water and recreational opportunities to small towns and sprawling metro areas alike. They are, as Stegner said, cures for cynicism and places of shared hope. Stegners words still resonate as Americans head for their public lands and enjoy the beauty of the wild places protected by wilderness legislation this summer. With visitor numbers increasing annually and agency budgets at historic lows, we believe it is useful to remember how precious these places are for all Americans. And we agree with Stegner that wilderness, public lands writ large, are more valuable to Americans collective identity and expression of freedom than they are as real estate that can be sold or commodities that can be extracted. Leisl Carr Childers is an associate professor of history at Colorado State University. Michael Childers is an associate professor of history at Colorado State University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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