Vinjeru Mkandawire

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38 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 27 May

Vinjeru Mkandawire’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.

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The Intelligence from The Economist · What price victory? Ukraine on the front foot · 27 May 2026 podcast

There is one economic indicator that can help us understand the state of the US housing market.

Home Depot.

Home Depot is no ordinary retailer.

It's the world's biggest DIY chain, and when sales drop or are flat, it can signal tough times ahead.

Long before most people saw the housing crash coming during the financial crisis in 2008, Home Depot sliding sales were already sounding the alarm, their numbers dropped and the housing markets soon followed.

Then once COVID hit, Home Depot's revenue surged along with the boom that followed the pandemic.

And now, if you look at the current state of the housing market, Home Depot might have some clues as to what's going on.

Well, the tills at Home Depot just aren't as busy.

Shoppers are still buying smaller items like gardening tools and paint, but they're not really starting large projects like kitchen and bathroom renovations.

What that tells us is that America's housing market is gridlocked.

Home prices have largely held up, but the home buying frenzy that we saw after the pandemic has ground to a halt.

Sales of existing homes over the past two years have fallen to their lowest level in three decades.

And Home Depot's finance chief said recently that they had never seen housing activity this low for this long.

So all this means fewer DIY projects, which is why Home Depot's annual sales in America have been falling or flat for three years.

The spike in mortgage rates is a big part of the problem.

The more expensive mortgages are, the less buyers can afford to pay for a house.

Not only are higher rates putting buyers off, but homeowners with pandemic era fixed rates of three percent or below are.

Are reluctant to sell now that the average rate has risen to nearly 6.5% on a new 30-year mortgage.

But another factor which I think is overlooked is homeowners' unwillingness to sell at a loss.

That loss aversion means that prices essentially haven't moved very much, but the number of sales has crashed.

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