A Phil Hall Op-Ed: Three months ago, Bill Pulte took to X to cheer the decline of the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage below the 6% level for the first time in four years. “President Trump, single-handedly, lowered mortgage rates. He’s the best,” declared Pulte on his...
A Phil Hall Op-Ed: The humorist Will Rogers once wisecracked, “All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that’s an alibi for my ignorance.” I was reminded of Rogers’ classic comment while reading a pair of recent Wall Street Journal articles regarding...
A Phil Hall Op-Ed: I know that I am rather late to the digital party, but I recently began playing around with ChatGPT and I find it to be an amusing distraction when I have a few minutes to kill and no intelligent solution for using that free time. I am extremely...
A Phil Hall Op-Ed: I don’t know about you, but I don’t take much pleasure in going to my mailbox after the postal carrier stops at my home. After all, there isn’t much pleasure to be found in the mailbox: some bills, a crummy free community newspaper that I never...
A Phil Hall Op-Ed: Last week, the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) number-crunched data from the American Community Survey and came up with a remarkable result: Roughly half of the nation’s housing stock was built in the 1980s and earlier, with slightly...
A Phil Hall Op-Ed: On Friday late afternoon, the Trump administration abruptly dumped a pair of executive orders online with the headings “Promoting Access to Mortgage Credit” and “Removing Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Home Construction.” Why the White House...
