Keith challenges the usual "overpopulated vs. underpopulated" debate and shows why that's the wrong way to think about demographics—especially if you're a real estate investor. Listeners will hear about surprising global population comparisons that flip common assumptions. Why raw population numbers don't actually explain housing shortages or rent strength. How household formation, aging, and mi...
Keith challenges the usual "overpopulated vs. underpopulated" debate and shows why that's the wrong way to think about demographics—especially if you're a real estate investor.
Listeners will hear about surprising global population comparisons that flip common assumptions.
Why raw population numbers don't actually explain housing shortages or rent strength.
How household formation, aging, and migration really drive demand for rentals.
Which kinds of markets tend to see persistent housing pressure—and why the US has a long‑term demographic edge.
You'll come away seeing population headlines very differently, and with a clearer lens for spotting where future housing demand is most likely to show up.
Episode Page:
GetRichEducation.com/590
For access to properties or free help with a
GRE Investment Coach, start here:
GREmarketplace.com
GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREinvestmentcoach.com
Get mortgage loans for investment property:
RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE
or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com
Invest with Freedom Family Investments.
For predictable 10-12% quarterly returns, visit FreedomFamilyInvestments.com/GRE or text 1-937-795-8989 to speak with a freedom coach
Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search "how to leave an Apple Podcasts review"
For advertising inquiries, visit:
GetRichEducation.com/ad
Best Financial Education:
GetRichEducation.com
Get our wealth-building newsletter free—
GREletter.com
Our YouTube Channel:
www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation
Follow us on Instagram:
@getricheducation
Complete episode transcript:
Keith Weinhold 0:01
Keith, welcome to GRE. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, is the world overpopulated or underpopulated? Also is the United States over or underpopulated? These are not just rhetorical questions, because I'm going to answer them both. Just one of Africa's 54 nations has more births than all of Europe and Russia combined. One US state has seen their population decline for decades. This is all central to housing demand today. On get rich education
Keith Weinhold 0:36
since 2014 the powerful get rich education podcast has created more passive income for people than nearly any other show in the world. This show teaches you how to earn strong returns from passive real estate investing in the best markets without losing your time being a flipper or landlord. Show Host Keith Weinhold writes for both Forbes and Rich Dad advisors, and delivers a new show every week since 2014 there's been millions of listener downloads of 188 world nations. He has a list show guests include top selling personal finance author Robert Kiyosaki. Get rich education can be heard on every podcast platform, plus it has its own dedicated Apple and Android listener phone apps build wealth on the go with the get rich education podcast. Sign up now for the get rich education podcast, or visit get rich education.com
Speaker 1 1:21
You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education.
Keith Weinhold 1:31
Welcome to GRE from Norfolk Virginia to Norfolk, Nebraska and across 188 nations worldwide, you are inside. Get rich education. I am the GRE founder, Best Selling Author, longtime real estate investor. You can see my written work in Forbes and the USA Today, but I'm best known as the host of this incomprehensibly slack John operation that you're listening to right now. My name is Keith Weinhold. You probably know that already, one reason that we're talking about underpopulated versus overpopulated today is that also one of my degrees is in geography and demography, essentially, is human geography, and that's why this topic is in my wheelhouse. It's just a humble bachelor's degree, by the way, if a population is not staying stable or growing, then demand for housing just must atrophy away. That's what people think, but that is not true. That's oversimplified. In some cases. It might even be totally false. You're going to see why. Now, Earth's population is at an all time high of about 8.2 billion people, and it keeps growing, and it's going to continue to keep growing, but the rate of growth is slowing now. Where could all of the people on earth fit? This is just a bit of a ridiculous abstraction in a sense, but I think it helps you visualize things. Just take this scenario, if all the humans were packed together tightly, but in a somewhat realistic way, in a standing room only way, if every person on earth stood shoulder to shoulder, that would allow about 2.7 square feet per person, they would sort of be packed like a subway car. Well, they could fit in a square, about 27 kilometers on one side, about 17 miles on each side of that square. Now, what does that mean in real places that is smaller than New York City, about half the size of Los Angeles County and roughly the footprint of Lake Tahoe? So yes, every human alive today could physically fit inside one midsize us metro area. This alone tells you something important. The world's problem is certainly not a lack of space. Rather, it's where people live and not how many there are. So that was all of Earth's inhabitants. Now, where could all Americans fit us residents using the same shoulder to shoulder assumption, and the US population by mid year this year is supposed to be about 350,000,00349 that's a square about five and a half kilometers, or 3.4 miles on each side. And some real world comparisons there are. That's about half of Manhattan, smaller than San Francisco and roughly the size of Disney World, so every American could fit into a single small city footprint. And if you're beginning to form an early clue that we are not overpopulated globally, yes, that's the sense that you Should be getting.
Keith Weinhold 5:01
now, if you're in Bangladesh, it feels overpopulated there. They've got 175 million people, and that nation is only the size of Iowa. In area, Bangladesh is low lying and typhoon prone. They get a lot of flooding, which complicates their already bad sanitation problems and a dense population like that, and that creates waterborne diseases, and it's really more of an infrastructure problem in a place like Bangladesh than it is a population problem. Then Oppositely, you've got Australia as much land as the 48 contiguous states, yet just 27 million people in Australia, and only 1/400 as many people as Bangladesh in density. Now we talk about differential population. About 80% of Americans live in the eastern half of the US. But yet, the East is not overpopulated because we have sufficient infrastructure, and I've got some more mind blowing population stats for you later, both world and us. Now, as far as is the world overpopulated or underpopulated, which is our central question, depending on who you ask and where they live, you're going to hear completely different answers. Some people are convinced that the planet is bursting at the seams. Others warn that we're headed for a population collapse. But here's the problem, that question overpopulated or underpopulated, it's the wrong question. It's the wrong framing, especially if you're into real estate, because housing demand doesn't respond to total headcount or global averages or scary demographic headlines. Housing demand responds to where people live, how old they are, and how they form households. And once you understand this, a lot of things suddenly begin to make sense, like why housing shortages persist, why rents stay high, even when affordability feels stretched, why some states struggle while others boom, and why population headlines often mislead investors.
Keith Weinhold 7:20
So today I want to reframe how you think about population and connect it directly to housing demand, both globally and right here in the United States. And let's start with the US, because that's probably where you invest.
Keith Weinhold 7:33
Here's a simple fact that should confuse people, but usually doesn't, the United States has below replacement fertility. I'll talk about fertility rates a little later. They're similar to birth rates, meaning that Americans are not having enough children to replace the population naturally and without immigration, the US population would eventually shrink, and yet in the US, we have a housing shortage, rising rents, tight vacancy and a lot of metros and persistent demand for rental housing, which could all seem contradictory. Now, if population alone determine housing demand, well, then the US really shouldn't have any housing shortage at all, but it does so clearly, population alone is not the main driver, and really that contradiction is like your first clue that most demographic conversations are just missing the point. Aging does not reduce housing demand. The way that people think a misconception really is that an aging population automatically reduces housing demand. It does not, in fact, just the opposite. If a population is too young, well, that tends to kill housing demand, and that's because five year old kids and 10 year old kids do not form their own household. Instead, what an aging population often does is change the type of housing that's demanded, like seniors aging in place, some of them downsizing. Seniors living alone. Sometimes after a spouse passes away, others relocating closer to health care or to family. So aging can increase unit demand even if population growth slows. So already, we've broken two myths here. Slower population doesn't mean weaker housing demand, and aging doesn't mean fewer housing units are needed. Now let's explain why. Really, the core idea that unlocks everything is that people don't live inside, what are called Population units. They live in households. You are one person. That does not mean that your dwelling is then one population unit. That's not how that works. You are part of a household, whether that's a house a Household of one person or five or 11 people, housing demand is driven by the number of households, the type of households and where those households are forming, not by raw population totals. So the same population can have wildly different demand. Just think about how five people living together in one home, that's one housing unit, those same five people living separately, that is five housing units, same population, five times the housing demand. And this is why population statistics alone are almost useless for real estate investors, you need to know how people are living, not just how many there are. The biggest surge in housing demand happens when people leave their parents' homes or when they finish school or when they start working, or you got big surges in housing demand when people marry or when they separate or divorce. So in other words, adults create housing demand and children don't. And this is why a country with a youngish, working age population, oh, then they can have exploding housing demand. A country with high birth rates, but low household formation can have overcrowding without profitable housing growth. So it's not about babies, it's about independent adults, and what quietly boosts housing demand, then is housing fragmentation. Yeah, fragmentation. That's a trend that really doesn't get enough attention, and that is the trend, households are fragmenting, meaning more single adults later marriage, like I was talking about in a previous episode. Recently, higher divorce rates, more people living alone and older adults living independently, longer. Each one of those trends increases housing demand without adding any population whatsoever. When two people split up, they often need two housing units instead of one, and if you've got one adult living alone, that is full unit demand right there. So that's why housing demand can rise even when population growth slows or stalls for housing demand. What matters more than births is migration. And another key distinction is that, yes, births matter, but they're on somewhat of this 20 year delay and migration matters immediately, right now. So see, when a working age adult moves, they need housing right away. They typically rent first. They cluster near jobs, and they don't bring housing supply along with them. They've got to get it from someone else. Hopefully you in your rental unit.
Keith Weinhold 12:57
This is why migration is such a powerful force in rental markets, and you see me talk about migration on the show, and you see me send you migration maps in our newsletter. It's also why housing pressure shows up unevenly. It gets concentrated around opportunity. If you want to know the future, look at renters. Renters are the leading indicator, not homeowners and not birth rates. See renters create housing demand faster than homeowners, because renters form households earlier. They can do it quickly because they don't need down payments. Renters move more frequently and immigration overwhelmingly starts in rentals, fresh immigrants rarely become homeowners, so even when mortgage rates rise or home purchases slow or affordability headlines get scary, rental demand can stay strong. It's not a mystery, it's demographics. So births surely matter, but only over the long term. It's like how I've shared with you in a previous episode that the US had a lot of births between 1990 and 2010 those two decades, a surge of births more than 4 million every single one of those years during those two decades, with that peak birth year at 2007 but see a bunch of babies being born in 2007 Well, that didn't make housing demand surge, since infants don't buy homes. But if you add, say, 20 years to 2007 when those people start renting, oh, well, that rental demand peaks in 2027 or maybe a little after that, and since the first time, homebuyer age is now 40. If that stays constant, well, then native born homebuyer demand won't peak until 2047 so when it comes to housing demand, the important thing to remember is migration has an immediate effect and births have a delayed effect.
Keith Weinhold 15:02
and I'm going to talk more about other nations shortly, but the US has two major migration forces working simultaneously, domestic and international migration. I mean, Americans move a lot, although not as much as they used to, and people move for jobs, for taxes, for weather, for cost of living and for lifestyle. So this creates state level winners and losers, and Metro level housing pressure and rent growth in those destination markets and national population averages totally hide this. So that's domestic migration. And then on the international migration. The US has a long history, hundreds of years now on, just continually attracting working age adults from around the world. This matters immensely, because they arrive ready to work, and they form households quickly. They overwhelmingly rent first. They concentrate in metros, and this props up rental demand before it ever shows up in home prices. And this is why investors often feel the rent pressure first those rising rents.
Keith Weinhold 16:17
I've got more straight ahead, including Nigeria versus Europe, and what about the overpopulation straining the environment? If you like, episodes that explain why housing behaves the way it does, rather than just reacting to the headlines. You'll want to be on my free weekly newsletter. I break down demographics, housing, demand, inflation, investor trends and real estate strategy in plain English, often complemented with maps. You can join free at greletter.com that's gre letter.com
Keith Weinhold 16:53
mid south homebuyers with over two decades as the nation's highest rated turnkey provider, their empathetic property managers use your return on investment as their North Star. It's no wonder smart investors line up to get their completely renovated income properties like it's the newest iPhone headquartered in Memphis, with their globally attractive cash flows, mid south has an A plus rating with the Better Business Bureau and 4000 houses renovated. There is zero markup on maintenance. Let that sink in, and they average a 98.9% occupancy rate with an industry leading three and a half year average renter term. Every home they offer you will have brand new components, a bumper to bumper, one year warranty, new 30 year roofs. And wait for it, a high quality renter in an astounding price range, 100 to 150k GET TO KNOW mid south enjoy cash flow from day one at mid southhomebuyers.com that's midsouthhomebuyers.com
Keith Weinhold 17:54
you know, most people think they're playing it safe with their liquid money, but they're actually losing savings accounts and bonds don't keep up when true inflation eats six or 7% of your wealth. Every single year, I invest my liquidity with FFI freedom family investments in their flagship program. Why fixed 10 to 12% returns have been predictable and paid quarterly. There's real world security backed by needs based real estate like affordable housing, Senior Living and health care. Ask about the freedom flagship program when you speak to a freedom coach there, and that's just one part of their family of products, they've got workshops, webinars and seminars designed to educate you before you invest. Start with as little as 25k and finally, get your money working as hard as you do. Get started at Freedom, family investments.com/gre, or send a text. Now it's 1-937-795-8989Yep. Text their freedom coach directly again. 1937795, 1-937-795-8989,
Keith Weinhold 19:05
the same place where I get my own mortgage loans is where you can get yours. Ridge lending group and MLS, 42056, they provided our listeners with more loans than anyone because they specialize in income properties. They help you build a long term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. Start your prequel and even chat with President chailey Ridge personally while it's on your mind, start at Ridge lending group.com that's Ridge lending group.com
Chris Martenson 19:37
this is peak prosperity. Is Chris Martinson. Listen to get rich education with Keith Weinhold, and don't quit your Daydream.
Keith Weinhold 19:53
Welcome back to get rich Education. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold, and this is episode 590 yes, we're in my Geography wheelhouse today, as I'm talking human geography and demographics with how it relates to housing, while answering our central question today is the world and the US overpopulated or underpopulated? And now that we understand some mechanics here, let's go global. Here's one of the most mind bending stats in all of demographics. Are you ready for this? When you hear this, it's going to have you hitting up chat, GPT, looking it up. It's going to be so astonishing. So jaw dropping. Every year, Nigeria has more births than all of Europe plus all of Russia combined. Would you talk about Willis?
Keith Weinhold 20:47
Yeah, yes, you heard that, right? Willis, that's what I'm talking about. Willis. The source of that data is, in fact, from the United Nations. Yes, Nigeria has seven and a half million births every year. Compare that to all of Europe plus Russia combined, they only have about 6.3 million births per year. So you're telling me that today, just one West African nation, and there are 54 nations in Africa. Just one West African nation produces more babies than the entire continent of Europe, with all of its nations plus all of Russia, the largest world nation by area. Yes, that is correct. One country in Africa produces more babies every year than France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK, all of Europe, including all the Eastern European nations, and all of Russia combined. This is a demographic reality, and now you probably already know that less developed nations, like Nigeria have higher birth rates than wealthier, more developed ones like France or Switzerland. I mean, that's almost common knowledge, but something that people think about less is that poorer nations also have a larger household size, which sort of makes sense when you think about it. In fact, Nigeria has five persons per household. Spain has two and a half, and the US also has that same level two and a half. That one difference alone explains why population growth and housing demand are completely different stories now, the US had 3.3 people per household in 1950 and it's down to that two and a half today. That means that even if the population stayed the same, the housing demand would rise. And this is evidence of what I talked about before the break, that households are fragmenting within the US. You can probably guess which state has the largest household size due to their Mormon population. It's Utah at 3.1 the smallest is Maine at 2.3 they have an older population. In fact, Maine has America's oldest population. And as you can infer with what you've learned now, the fact that they have just 2.3 people per household means that if their populations were the same. Maine would need more housing units than Utah. By the way, if you're listening closely at times, I have referred to the United States as simply America. Yes, I am American. You are going to run into some people out there that don't like it. When US residents call themselves Americans, they say something like, Hey, you need a geography lesson. America runs from Nunavut all the way down to Argentina. Here's what to tell them. No, look, there are about 200 world nations. There is only one that has the word America in it, that is the United States of America that usually makes them lighten up. That is why I am an American, not a Peruvian or Bolivian, and there's no xenophobic connotation whatsoever. There are more productive things to think about moving on. Why births matter is because births today become future workers, renters, consumers and even migrants. But not evenly. Young populations move toward a few things. They're attracted to capital. They move towards stability. They're attracted to opportunity, and young populations move toward infrastructure. That's not ideology, that's the gravity and the US remains one of the strongest gravity wells on Earth, a big magnet, a big attractant. Now it's sort of interesting. I know a few a People that believe that the world is indeed overpopulated, they often tend to be environmental enthusiasts, and the environment is a concern, for sure, but how big of a concern is it? That's the debatable part. And you know, it's funny, I've run into the same people that think that the world is overpopulated, they seem to lament at school closures. You see more school closures because just there weren't as many children that were born after the global financial crisis. And these people that are afraid we have an overpopulation problem call school closures a sad phenomenon. They think it's sad. Well, if you want a shrinking population, then you're going to see a lot more than just schools close so many with environmental concerns, though. The thing is, is that they seem to discount the fact that humans innovate. More than 200 years ago, Thomas Malthus, he famously failed. He wrote a book, thinking that the global population would exceed what he called his carrying capacity, meaning that we wouldn't be able to feed everybody. He posited that, look, this is a problem. Populations grow exponentially, but food production only grows linearly. But he was wrong, because, due to agricultural innovation, we have got too many calories in most places. Few people thought this many humans could live in the United States, Sonoran and Mojave deserts, that's Phoenix in Las Vegas, respectively. But our ability to recycle and purify water allows millions of people to live there. So my point about running out of resources is that history shows us that humans are a resource ourselves, and we keep finding ways to innovate, or keep finding ways to actually not need that rare earth element or whatever it is now, if the earth warms too much from human related activity, can we cool it off again? And how much of a problem is this? I am not sure, and that goes beyond the scope of our show. But the broader point here is that history shows us that humans keep figuring things out, and that is somewhat of an answer to those questions. The world is not overpopulated, it is unevenly populated. Some regions are young, others are growing, others are capital constrained, and then other regions are aging, shrinking and capital rich. And that very imbalance right there is what fuels migration and fuels labor flows and fuels housing demand in destination countries and the US benefits from this imbalance. Unlike almost anywhere else in the world, it's a demographic magnet. Yes, you do have some smaller ones out there, like Dubai, for example.
Keith Weinhold 28:04
But why? Why do we keep attracting immigrants? Well, we've got strong labor markets, capital availability, property rights, economic mobility, and US has existing housing stock. Countries today don't just compete for capital, they're competing for people. In the US keeps attracting working age adults, and that is exactly the demographic that creates housing demand, and this is why long term housing demand in the US is more resilient than a lot of people think. In fact, the US population of about 350 million. This year, it's projected to peak at about 370 million, near 2080 and of course, the big factor that makes that pivot is that level of immigration. So that's why the population projections vary now. The last presidential administration allowed for a lot of immigrants. The current one few immigrants, and the next one, nobody knows. You've got a group called the falconist party that calls for increased legal immigration into the US. Yeah, they want to allow more migrants into the country, but yet they want to enforce illegal immigration. That sounds just like it's spelled, F, A, L, C, O, N, i, s, t, the falconist Party, but the us's magnetic effect to keep driving population growth through immigration is key, because you might already know that 2.1 is the magic number you need a fertility rate of at least 2.1 to maintain a population fertility rate that is the average number of children that a woman is expected to have over her lifetime. And be sure you don't confuse these numbers with the earlier numbers of people per. Per household, like I discussed earlier, although higher fertility rates are usually going to lead to more people per household, India's fertility rate is already down to 2.0 Yes, it is the most populated nation in the world, but since women, on average, only have two children, India is already below replacement fertility. The US and Australia are each at 1.6 Japan is just 1.2 China's is down to 1.0 South Korea's is at an incredibly low seven tenths of one, so 0.7 in South Korea, and then Nigeria's is still more than four. So among all those that I mentioned, only Nigeria is above the replacement rate of 2.1 and most of the nations above that rate are in Africa. Israel is a big outlier at 2.9 you've got others in the Middle East and South Asia that are above replacement rate as well. And when I say things like it's still up there, that whole still thing refers to the fact that there is this tendency worldwide for society to urbanize and have fewer children. For those fertility rates to keep falling. And that's why the future population growth is about which nations attract immigrants, and that is the US. Is huge advantage. Now there's a great way to look at where future births are going to come from. A way to do this is consider your chance of being born on each continent in the year 2100 This is interesting. In the year 2100 a person has a 48% chance of being born in Africa, 38% in South Asia, in the Middle East, 5% South America, 5% in Europe or Russia, 4% in North America, and less than 1% in Australia. Those are the chances of you being born on each of those continents in the year 2100 and that sourced by the UN.
Keith Weinhold 32:09
the world population is, as I said earlier, about 8.2 billion, and it's actually expected to peak around the same time that the US population is in the 2080s and that'll be near 10 point 3 billion. All right, so both the world and the US population should rise for another 50 to 60 years. Let's talk about population winners and losers inside the US. I mean, this is where population conversations really become useful for investors, because population doesn't matter nationally that much. It really matters locally, unevenly and sometimes it almost feels unfairly. So let me give you some perspective shifting stats. I think I shared with you when I discussed new New York City Mayor Zoran Manami here on the show a month or two ago, that the New York City Metro Area has over 20 million people, nearly double the combined population of Arizona and Nevada together, yes, just one metro area, the same as Two entire sparsely populated states. So when someone says people are leaving New York I mean that tells you almost nothing, unless you know where they're going. How many are still arriving in New York City to replace those leaving, and how many households are still forming inside that Metro? The household formation so scale matters, however, net, people are not leaving New York. New York City recently had more in migration than any other US Metro. Some states are practically empty. Alaska or take Wyoming. Wyoming has fewer than 600,000 people in the entire state. That's fewer people than a lot of single US cities. That's only about six people per square mile. In Wyoming, that's about the population of one midsize Metro suburb. Now, when someone says the US has plenty of land in a lot of cases, they're right. I mean, just look out the window when you fly over Wyoming or the Dakotas. But people don't really live where land is cheap. They actually don't want to. Most of the time. They live where jobs, incomes and their networks already exist. You know, the wealthy guy that retires to Wyoming and it has a 200 acre ranch is an outlier. There's a reason he can sprawl out and make it 200 acres. There's virtually nobody there. Let's understand too that population loss, that doesn't mean that demand is gone, but it does change the rules, especially when you think about a place like West Virginia. They have lost population in most decades since the 1950s and incredibly, their population is lower today than it was in 1930 we're talking about West Virginia statewide. They have an aging population. West Virginia has an outmigration of young adults. So this doesn't mean that no real estate works in West Virginia, but it means that appreciation stories are fragile. Income matters more than equity. Growth and demographics are a headwind, not a tailwind. That's a very different investment posture than where you usually want to be. It's important to understand that a handful of metros, just a handful, are absorbing massive national growth. And here's something that a lot of investors underestimate. About half of all US, population growth flows into fewer than 15 metro areas, and it's not just New York City, Houston, Miami, but smaller places like Jacksonville, Austin and Raleigh, and that really helps pump their real estate market. So that means demand concentrates, housing pressure intensifies, and rent growth becomes pretty sticky, unless you wildly overbuild for a short period of time like Austin did, and this is why some metros just feel perpetually tight over the long term, and others feel permanently sluggish. Population does not spread evenly. It piles up. In fact, Texas is a great case in point here. Understand that Texas is adding people faster than some entire nations do. Texas alone adds hundreds of 1000s of residents per year in strong cycles. Some years, they do add more people than entire small countries, more than several Midwest states combined. And of course, they don't spread evenly across Texas. They cluster in DFW, Houston, Austin and San Antonio, so pretty much the Texas triangle, and that clustering fact is everything for housing demand, yet at the same time, there are fully 75 Texas counties that are losing population, typically out in West Texas. Then there's Florida. Florida isn't just growing. It's replacing people. Florida's growth. It's not just net positive, it's replacement migration, and it's across all different types and ages. You've got retirees arriving, you've got young workers arriving, you've got young households forming, and you've got seniors aging in place. So this way, among a whole spectrum of ages, you've got demand for rentals, workforce housing, age specific, housing and multifamily all in Florida, and this is why Florida housing demand over the long term is not going to cool off the way that a few skeptics expect. Now, of course, some areas did temporarily overbuild in Florida in the years following the pandemic. Yes, that's led to some temporary Florida home price attrition, but that is going to be absorbed. California did not empty out. It reshuffled now. There were some recent years where California lost net population, but here's what that hides. Some metros lost residents. Others stayed flat. You had some income brackets that left California and others arrived. In fact, California has slight population growth today overall, so housing demand definitely did not vanish. It shifted within the state and then outward to nearby states, and that's how Arizona, Nevada and Texas benefited. But overall, California's population count, really, it's just pretty steady, not declining.
Keith Weinhold 39:05
population density. It's that density that predicts rent pressure better than growth rates. Do something really important for real estate investors. Dense metros absorb shocks better. They have less elastic housing supply, and they see faster rent rebounds. Sparse areas have cheaper land and easier supply expansion and weaker rent resilience. So that's why rents snap back faster in dense metros, and oversupply hurts more in spread out to regions. Density matters more than raw growth does. Shrinking states can still have tight housing I mean, some states lose population overall, but yet they still have housing shortages in certain metros, and you'll have tight rental markets near job centers, and you've got strong demand In limited sub markets, even if the state is shrinking. And I think you know this is why the slower growing Northeast and Midwest, they've had the highest home price appreciation in the past two years. There's not enough building there. If your population falls 1% but the available housing falls 2% well, you can totally get into a housing shortage situation, and that bids up real estate prices. And when people look at population charts on the state level, a lot of times, they still get misled. When you buy an investment property, you don't buy a state, you buy a specific market within it, so the United States is not full it is lopsided. The US is not overpopulated. It is heavily clustered. It's unevenly dense, and it's really driven by migration. And perhaps a better way to say it is that the US population is really opportunity concentrated housing demand follows jobs, networks, wages and migration flows. It sure does not follow empty land. And really the investor takeaway is, is that when you hear population stats, don't put too much weight on the question, is the population rising or falling? Although that's something you certainly want to know. Some better questions to ask are, where are households forming? Where are adults moving? Where is supply constrained? And where does income support, rent like those are, what four big questions there, because population alone does not create housing demand. It's households under constraint that do so. Our big arching overall question is the world overpopulated or underpopulated? The answer is neither. The world is unevenly populated. It's unevenly aged, and it's unevenly governed. And for real estate investors, the lesson is simple. You don't invest in population counts, you invest in household formation, age structure, migration and supply constraints. Really, that's a big learning summary for you, that's why housing demand can stay strong even when population growth slows. And once you understand that demographic headlines that seem scary aren't as scary, and they start to be more useful. Why I've wanted to do this overpopulated versus underpopulated episode for you for years. I've really thought about it for years. I really hope that you got something useful out of it. Let's be mindful of the context too. When it comes to the classic Adam Smith economics of supply demand, I've only discussed one side today, largely just the demand side and not the supply side so much that would involve a discussion about building and some more things that supply side. Now that I've helped you ask a better question about population and the future of housing demand, you might wonder where you can get better answers. Well, like I mentioned earlier, I provide a lot of that and help you make sense of it, both right here on this show and with my newsletter, geography is something that's more conducive and meaningful to you visually, that's often done with a map, and that's why my letter at greletter.com will help you more if you enjoy learning through maps, just like we've done every year since 2014 I've got 52 great episodes coming to you this year. If you haven't consider subscribing to the show until next week, I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, don't quit your Daydream.
Speaker 2 43:57
Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice, please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get rich Education LLC, exclusively you
Keith Weinhold 44:25
The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth, building, get richeducation.com
