Hi, I'm Dan Premack, and welcome to Axios Recap, where we dig into one big story.

Today is Thursday, June 3rd. Gas prices are up, former President Trump's blog,

in it down, and we're focused on America's frenzied housing boom.

If you've tried to buy or sell a house in America lately, you know this is a market,

unlike anything any of us have ever seen, including during that boom that precipitated the 2008

financial crisis. Try to buy something, and you've basically just entered a competition in which

traditional safeguards like inspections are often off the table even before the bidding begins.

Try to sell a house, and you might be done by dinner.

Median U.S. home prices rose 20.1% between April of last year and April of this year,

topping $372,000.

In major metro areas, the annual growth rate is the highest it's been in 16 years, and cheaper

new home sales, i.e. homes under 300 grand, are at their lowest percentage in decades.

What's driving the boom? Well, part of it is ultra-low interest rates. Part of it is sky-high

lumber prices, which has increased new home prices and kind of carried over to existing homes.

And then there's the whole

pandemic, remote work, moved from the city phenomenon. What comes next, though, might be just as

interesting, because a federal foreclosure moratorium just ended, and that could begin to change

the supply and demand dynamic, although such moratoriums do still exist in certain states and

localities. And then there's the Fed, the Federal Reserve, which isn't touching interest rates yet,

but in the last 24 hours did say it'll sell off some of the corporate bonds it bought during the pandemic,

suggesting that the Fed is at least beginning to change course.

So today we want to better understand the housing boom in terms of what it means for

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