Two weeks ago, my wife Katie—36 weeks pregnant at the time—woke me up at 3am (“turn on the light!”). Because we live in New York City, my first thought was that she had spotted a cockroach or a mouse. In fact, her water had broken, and our baby girl was on her way a month earlier than expected.

The past two weeks have been a whirlwind—and they’ve been absolutely wonderful. My daughter Leila and her mom are both thriving. And I am unexpectedly on paternity leave earlier than I thought I’d be. I will be off until the new year.

In the meantime, I have convinced (strong-armed?) some of my favorite housing market writers on Substack to author guest posts for us in my absence.

Over the coming weeks you will hear from an economist with some unconventional views about how home prices are determined; a real estate strategist about how technology is changing the housing market; and a computer scientist about how to use code to produce beautiful data visualization, amongst others.

I’ve never published Home Economics on much of a schedule, but—with all the (good) personal stuff going on here for the past few months—my readers have put up with an unusually thin and lumpy supply of work. That will change, but not for a few more months.

In the meantime, if you're a paying subscriber and would like to pause your billing until I'm back in full force, I completely understand. If you'd like to support my parental leave by leaving your subscription active, I am grateful for your contribution as I take these weeks to bond with my family and establish our new normal.

Regardless, I deeply appreciate your ongoing support and can’t wait to share some exciting new analyses with you in 2025.

All the best,