The Housing Market is About to Pop. How Does This Affect Crypto?The US Census Bureau recently published population numbers for cities across the US, and the numbers don't look too good: most large urban centers in the country have taken significant population losses in 2020-2021. Politicians and media pundits typically blame COVID and supply chain woes, though these trends were already happening even before the pandemic - the lockdown only accelerated what was already there. Los Angeles lost around 1% of its total population - which is already significant - but San Francisco and New York lost a staggering 6.7% and 6.9%, respectively.
Most US urban centers have been struggling with a housing shortage crisis in the last few decades as housing costs, rents, and costs of living have been outpacing both inflation and wage growth exponentially since the financial crisis "recovery" in 2008. (This was around the time Bitcoin was invented, coincidentally.) In addition to rising crime, homelessness, and loss of quality of life, the well-paying jobs are also leaving the state citing high taxes and unfavorable business policies - giving people less reason to be there as well.
The housing market is no different than other markets in that it operates on supply and demand . Housing advocates typically propose building more housing units (increase the supply) to bring costs down, but most cities have opted for the other "solution" - which is to bring costs down by decreasing the desirability of the city itself. (It's an unfortunate series of events, but it is what it is.) Nominal vs real pricing charts of US housing shows that listed prices are vastly inflated compared to its "real" value, which is contributing both to the bubble and the loss of quality in housing construction itself.
San Francisco's Case-Shiller Index was chosen since it's objectively the most housing-inflated area right now, objectively speaking. The housing bubble is most likely to pop there, then cascade downwards onto other markets as people's faith in its growth starts to stagger. The reasons above (combined with the Fed's interest rate hikes this year) are why even Wall Street and big companies have taken an interest in crypto, NFTs, and metaverse assets lately, since they see it as a hedge against a weakened dollar and a recession (potentially a depression) looming in the horizon. At this point it's not a matter of "if", but "when".
For crypto/metaverse investors, the thing to keep an eye on is the level of trust that the general public has in the banking system right now. When the housing bubble pops, it could potentially lead to a liquidity event of a magnitude never before seen, since technically there would be a lot cash sitting in people's hands, looking for places to invest.
- The pessimistic outcome for crypto investors is the "money running scared" scenario - where panicked money runs back to the banks and other "conservative" investments assets (bonds, cash) that are seen to have less volatility overall. This may lead people to cash out and leave the crypto ecosystem altogether, causing a downturn in the asset class overall. Keep in mind, though, that housing, cash, and bonds have *traditionally* been seen as "reliable" investment choices, but in recent years those are the exact assets that have been inflating - which has lead many experts to question if they are functioning in the way it was originally intended overall. If that perception becomes shattered, a lot could change overnight.
- The optimistic outcome for crypto investors is if the money that was intended for buying housing or other related assets becomes "free", potentially going into alternative assets, which includes crypto. Since a major housing bubble at this scale hasn't happened here there's not much data to show one way or another but we do know that the Evergrande crisis in China has had basically no (arguably inverse) effects on the crypto market as a whole. Panicked money may flow into crypto in ways never before if it's seen as a safe-haven against the turbulence of the housing market and the USD as a whole.
Realistically, there will probably be a little bit of both going on, but being that the size of the US housing market is much bigger than the size of the crypto market cap, crypto needs much less of a % of money flowing inwards in order for it to grow. The housing market, on the other hand, has nowhere to go but down. Time will tell, but it would be advisable for people to be prudent about where to put their money this year, because a lot could happen very quickly as the United States faces its biggest financial crisis in decades in the near future.
