The Missing 4–5 Million Homes (and the awkward moment everyone pretends that won’t matter)

America has a housing problem that’s less “cute fixer-upper” and more “how is this load-bearing, exactly?”

Since the Great Recession, we didn’t just slow down building for a bit—we underbuilt for years. Depending on who’s doing the math (and what they count), reputable estimates put the U.S. housing shortage roughly in the ~3.7 million to ~4.9 million+ range recently.

Call it “about 4–5 million homes” missing from the national inventory—the equivalent of losing an entire major metro area… and then acting surprised that prices got spicy.

Why it matters: supply isn’t a vibe, it’s physics

If you add meaningful inventory to a market that’s tight, prices don’t usually react by politely clapping. They react by… calming down.

That’s the hopeful part: more homes can make homes more affordable.

The awkward part: existing homeowners tend to prefer “affordability” as a concept that applies to other people’s children, not their own Zestimate. (Bless.)

“Just build 5 million homes!” — Sure. Right after we teach cats to file taxes.

Even if everyone agreed we should close the gap, there are real constraints:

• Permits: you can’t build what you can’t legally start. (California says hello, then makes you fill out Form 47B in triplicate.)

• Labor: skilled trades aren’t an on-demand streaming service.

• Materials and costs: build economics matter; if projects don’t pencil, they don’t break ground.

• Time: homes are not 3D-printed in a weekend… despite what HGTV implies.

And the raw national pipeline shows the bottleneck reality. The latest U.S. Census data (October 2025) puts housing starts ~1.246M (SAAR), permits ~1.412M, and completions ~1.386M.
That’s the scale we’re talking about.

A back-of-the-napkin “how fast can we close the gap?”

Let’s do the kind of math that makes economists feel powerful and makes everyone else want to throw the napkin away.

Assume the shortage is 4.5 million homes (roughly in the range of major estimates).
The real question is: how many extra homes above “normal demand” can we add each year?

Here are three “near-perfect circumstances” scenarios:

That’s why this isn’t likely to produce a sudden “inventory tsunami” that crashes prices nationwide overnight. More likely, it’s a multi-year pressure valve: prices don’t necessarily collapse, but they could stay muted compared with the “pandemic-era rocket ship” years.

Why affordability got so bad (in one sentence)

Even with more building post-pandemic, prices jumped hard, rates jumped later, and we ended up with the worst of both worlds: high prices and high monthly payments. More supply helps, but it doesn’t unwind the last few years instantly.

Then Warren Buffett (or at least Berkshire) shows up at the construction site

Here’s where it gets fun. In mid-2025, Berkshire Hathaway disclosed new positions in major homebuilders including Lennar and D.R. Horton (roughly ~$800M and ~$191.5M in value at the time of the filing).

Important nuance: reporting notes these may have been made by Berkshire’s portfolio managers rather than Buffett personally—still meaningful, but not necessarily “Warren himself picked out the studs at Home Depot.”

Either way, markets pay attention because Berkshire tends to think in years, not TikTok cycles.

What to watch: this may become the housing tell for 2026–2028

If the U.S. meaningfully ramps construction and chips away at the shortage, it could become a major driver of:

• home price appreciation slowing (or flattening in some areas)

• new-home sales staying relatively strong vs. existing-home turnover

• investor opportunities in builders, land development, and value-add strategies

• regional divergence: markets that can build will behave very differently than markets that can’t

In other words: the next few years may not be about a dramatic crash. They may be about a slow shift in the tide—one extra subdivision at a time.

Bottom line

The U.S. housing market has been running with a structural supply deficit for a long time. Closing a 4–5 million home gap won’t happen quickly, but even steady progress could keep prices from re-accelerating—and gradually bring affordability back from the dead.

Which is great for buyers, decent for the country… and mildly horrifying for anyone whose retirement plan is “my house will keep going up forever.”

Because gravity is undefeated. Even in real estate.

Prices probably won’t crash. But the era of ‘my house gained $200k because the sun rose’ may be over.

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Stateside Signals

 

King Dollar Steps Back—America Steps Forward

For most of the modern era, the U.S. dollar has been the global economy’s default setting—the world’s reserve currency, the preferred unit for cross-border trade, finance, and “where do I park my wealth when everything feels sketchy?”

Which sounds like a compliment… until you realize it comes with side effects.

Reserve currency: privilege and a nuisance

When foreigners want dollars (and dollar assets), that demand tends to support a higher dollar. A higher dollar makes imports cheaper for Americans (yay, affordable stuff) but makes U.S. exports pricier abroad (boo, tougher for manufacturers). Over time, that dynamic can contribute to a larger trade deficit and pressure on certain domestic industries—basically, the dollar’s global popularity can be a little like being too attractive: everyone wants you, and you can’t get anything done.

So when the dollar weakens, it’s not automatically “the sky is falling.” It can be the system rebalancing—sometimes by design.

Why the dollar is weakening now

Recent reporting shows the dollar has slid sharply—hitting multi-year lows on the Dollar Index (DXY)—with analysts pointing to a mix of policy uncertainty, shifting investor sentiment, and the market’s view of where U.S. rates are headed.

And yes, politics is in the soup. With President Trump back in office (again—history really does love sequels), the administration has signaled comfort with a weaker dollar in the name of competitiveness and reindustrialization, and Trump himself has publicly brushed off concerns about the decline.

Now, to be precise (because economics loves precision the way cats love knocking glasses off counters): the President doesn’t set interest rates—the Federal Reserve does. But presidential pressure, public messaging, and the broader policy direction can still shape market expectations. In fact, coverage of the dollar’s slide has explicitly pointed to concerns around policy volatility and even the perception of Fed independence as factors weighing on the currency.

The “America First” logic: weaker dollar = stronger factories

Here’s the domestic-first argument in plain English:

• A weaker dollar makes U.S. goods cheaper overseas, which can help exporters.

• It makes foreign goods more expensive here, nudging consumers and companies toward domestic alternatives.

• Pair that with tariffs, and you’ve got a one-two punch aimed at reshoring manufacturing and trimming the trade deficit.

This is not fringe logic; it’s a known strategic tradeoff—and some analyses describe the challenge as trying to weaken the dollar without undermining its reserve-currency dominance (a bit like trying to lose weight while keeping the exact same pizza intake).

The cost: inflation sneaks in through the import aisle

The risk is equally straightforward:

• A weaker dollar can push up import prices (and Americans import a lot).

• Many commodities are priced in dollars, and when the dollar falls, commodity prices often rise in dollar terms—feeding inflation pressure.

That “two-sided coin” point shows up repeatedly in market coverage: good for exporters and multinationals, but potentially inflationary for consumers.

Gold’s glow-up: the dollar’s mood ring

One of the clearest “tell” signals has been gold. When people worry about currencies or geopolitics, they tend to sprint toward shiny metals like it’s the Middle Ages and the castle gates are closing.

Reuters and other outlets have tied gold’s surge to investor demand and weakening confidence in fiat currencies, including the dollar—alongside geopolitical risk.

So yes: weaker dollar → stronger gold, at least in the emotional logic of markets.

Europe’s problem: when your currency gets “too strong”

America isn’t the only one dealing with awkward consequences.

A weaker dollar often means a stronger euro, which can be great for lowering import costs (hello, cheaper energy) but rough on exports—especially for an export-heavy economy like Germany. Germany’s chancellor has publicly called the weak dollar/strong euro combination a burden for exporters.

Meanwhile, Reuters reports Europe is wrestling with the paradox of wanting a “global euro” while also worrying that euro strength could drag inflation down and complicate growth—exactly when Europe’s also staring down higher defense spending and a more fragile geopolitical environment.

Bottom line: the dollar isn’t dying—it’s reprioritizing

The dollar’s reserve status is still real and still enormous—one recent explainer pegs the dollar at about 57% of global reserves, which is not exactly “washed up,” even if it’s not as untouchable as it once was.

What is changing is the vibe: the U.S. is signaling that it may prioritize the dollar’s domestic job (competitiveness, manufacturing, trade balance) more than its global job (being the pristine, universally adored safe haven).

“The dollar isn’t collapsing. It’s being redeployed—like a battleship that’s decided it prefers shipyards to cocktail parties.”

 

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Open Seas Outlook

 

Uncle Sam, the Real Estate Investor

If the U.S. ever had a hobby, it’s expanding the map with a checkbook, a grin and a gun.

The United States didn’t become a continent-spanning superpower by only writing stirring speeches and inventing jazz. It also did it the old-fashioned way: by showing up with a checkbook, a straight friendly face and a gun (following the adage credited to Al Capone – “you get very far with a kind word, but much further with a kind word and a gun.”)

And to be fair… it worked. Spectacularly.

Uncle Sam’s greatest hits (a.k.a. “Receipts We Still Brag About”)

America has literally purchased big chunks of the map from other countries, including:

• Louisiana Purchase (1803) — bought from France for $15 million, doubling the size of the country in one swing.

• Florida (Adams–Onís Treaty, 1819) — Spain ceded Florida; the U.S. assumed up to $5 million in claims (no cash handed to Spain, but still a paid acquisition in practice).

• Gadsden Purchase (1853–54) — from Mexico for $10 million (southern AZ + SW NM… plus a railroad dream).

• Alaska Purchase (1867) — from Russia for $7.2 million (a deal so good it still makes modern shoppers weep).

• Philippines (Treaty of Paris, 1898/99) — Spain agreed to sell the Philippines to the U.S. for $20 million.

• U.S. Virgin Islands (1917) — bought from Denmark for $25 million in gold coin.

So yes: Uncle Sam has form. This isn’t “unprecedented.” This is brand consistency.

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Then there’s Greenland: the listing that keeps coming back on Zillow

The U.S. has flirted with Greenland for so long it’s basically a slow-motion rom-com:

• 1867–1868: After buying Alaska, U.S. officials commissioned a detailed report on Iceland and Greenland’s resources—a very 19th-century way of saying, “just browsing.”

• 1910: A proposed land-swap concept involving Greenland surfaced in diplomatic chatter (the kind of idea that sounds brilliant right up until it’s explained out loud).

• 1946: Truman’s administration made the cleanest offer: $100 million in gold for Greenland. Denmark declined.

Even without owning Greenland, the U.S. secured major strategic access through the 1951 U.S.–Danish defense agreement, which has anchored America’s military presence there ever since.

Today that presence is centered on Pituffik Space Base (formerly Thule Air Base), a critical node for missile warning and space surveillance.

---

February 2026: the “deal” talk, the headlines, and the fine print

Now we’re back in Greenland season again.

“Denmark keeps the title, America gets the keys, and Greenland… gets more visitors” – I think

President Trump has publicly suggested optimism about reaching a framework that gives the U.S. very broad access in Greenland, tying it to Arctic security, missile defense ambitions, and concerns about Russian and Chinese activity in the region.

But here’s the key reality check: Denmark and Greenland have repeatedly said sovereignty is not negotiable, and reporting around the latest “framework” suggests Trump’s characterization (“total access”) is not the same thing as Denmark’s understanding (“expanded cooperation within existing sovereignty”).

And on the “minerals” piece specifically: at least one recent report notes that mineral exploitation was not clearly part of the discussions as described by U.S. officials covering the tentative deal claims.

So what are we really looking at?

Most plausibly: a supercharged version of what already exists—expanded basing rights and infrastructure under the umbrella of the 1951 agreement, plus stronger guardrails against adversarial influence. Congress’s own research service notes that the 1951 agreement (with later amendments) already provides avenues to expand the U.S. presence.

Some commentators have floated a “lease model” (think: secure coastal sites leased for defense purposes) that avoids any sovereignty transfer while still giving the U.S. more runway—military and economic—in the Arctic.

Which brings us to Denmark’s side of the ledger: even if Denmark keeps formal sovereignty, there’s a fair question whether Copenhagen ends up subsidizing a territory while Washington gets the strategic upside. Denmark and Greenland, for their part, keep insisting the island isn’t for sale—full stop.

Closing thought from your friendly neighborhood mortgage guy

I briefly considered calling Washington and offering a DSCR loan to buy Greenland.

Then I remembered one tiny underwriting issue:

The initial rent from “Arctic sovereignty with occasional polar bears” probably won’t cover the debt service.

So unless Uncle Sam can get Pituffik to start charging parking fees—or the musk oxen agree to a triple-net lease—we may have to settle for the boring alternative: diplomacy, treaties, and the world’s iciest joint venture.

(Still… if you do have a rental property with income that actually pencils, I can help with that. Greenland not required.)

“I’d happily underwrite Greenland… but the rent roll is mostly snow.”

 

With access to C2 Financials’ 100+ lenders and   decades of personal experience in building, turning around and managing companies, raising capital, and running M&A I can help provide solutions to maximize your operations and secure optimal funding.

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The Old

The New

The Food Pyramid: A Brief History of How We Ate Ourselves Into Trouble

 

Once upon a time—in the innocent, crew-cut optimism of the 1950s—the USDA unveiled the Food Pyramid.in 1992 based upon the Basic Four in 1956 followed by the Food Wheel in 1984.

It was majestic. It was orderly. It was built, quite literally, on a foundation of bread, pasta, rice, and potatoes. Wheat held the nation aloft like some glutenous Atlas.

This wasn’t accidental. America was producing carbohydrates by the shipload. We had wheat. We had corn. We had silos so full they were practically pleading for purpose. And so, in what can only be described as a triumph of agricultural policy over human metabolism, carbs became the base of the American diet.

Eat six to eleven servings a day, they said.
Your pancreas will figure it out, they implied.

Fast-forward a few decades and—surprise—we did not become a nation of slim, sprightly farmhands. We became the most obese society in human history, with diabetes, heart disease, and metabolic dysfunction piling up like unclaimed luggage at O’Hare.

If this was a miscalculation, it was a big one.
If it wasn’t… well, let’s not dwell.

Enter the upside-down pyramid

In a move that caused simultaneous applause, outrage, and loud sighing from grain lobbyists, the Trump administration backed a dramatic rethink of dietary priorities. The pyramid was, in effect, flipped.

• Protein—meat, fish, eggs, dairy—moved to the foundation.
• Fats, long treated like dietary war criminals, were paroled.
• Bread, pasta, and potatoes were escorted to the top of the structure and told to behave themselves—sparingly and occasionally.

One can only imagine the reaction in Iowa.

This wasn’t entirely ideological bravado. It reflected a growing body of metabolic science: protein and healthy fats create satiety. They tell your body, “We’re done here.” Pasta, on the other hand, whispers, “Just one more bowl… surely.”

Nutrition science: now you see it, now you don’t

Of course, nutrition science has the shelf life of fresh fish.

• Eggs were once dietary villains. Now they’re heroes.
• Salt was the devil. Then it wasn’t. Then it was again.
• Butter was banned. Margarine reigned. Then margarine was quietly escorted out the back door in disgrace.

So yes—skepticism is warranted. The food advice pendulum swings with remarkable enthusiasm, often leaving the public dizzy and clutching a shopping list they no longer trust.

And yet… one diet refuses to budge

While Americans have spent decades asking, “How do the French eat butter, cream, foie gras, and drink wine without exploding?” the answer has been hiding in plain sight.

The Mediterranean diet.

It’s not a trend. It’s not a reset. It’s not wrapped in plastic.
It’s how people around the Mediterranean have eaten for centuries—long before anyone counted macros or fear-mongered cholesterol.

Why it works (without shouting about it)

Mediterranean food is boringly sensible:

• Protein first – fish, seafood, eggs, yogurt, cheese, modest amounts of meat
• Healthy fats – olive oil as a food group, not a garnish
• Vegetables everywhere – seasonal, colorful, unapologetic
• Whole grains – present, respected, but not worshipped
• Wine – yes, really, in moderation and usually with food
• Portion control – not by discipline, but by biology

High-protein, high-fat meals naturally limit portion size. Try overeating lamb, olives, feta, and grilled fish—it’s harder than it sounds. Pasta, meanwhile, has no such braking system. Left alone, it will gladly accept leadership of your entire evening.

 

The New: A Mediterranean Food Pyramid (that actually makes sense)

Foundation (daily, joyfully):

• Vegetables of every shape and color

• Olive oil (generously, unapologetically)

• Herbs, garlic, onions, legumes

Second tier (daily):

• Fish and seafood

• Eggs

• Yogurt and cheese

Third tier (weekly):

• Poultry

• Red meat (small portions, not center stage)

Fourth tier (occasionally):

• Whole grains: bread, pasta, rice, potatoes

Crowning glory:

• Sweets (rare)

• Wine (moderate, preferably with friends and laughter)

The quiet lessonThe Mediterranean diet doesn’t shout. It doesn’t moralize. It doesn’t change every election cycle. It has simply endured—outlasting pyramids, plates, charts, and government pamphlets.Maybe the real lesson isn’t that we need a new pyramid.
Maybe it’s that we should stop redesigning human biology to suit surplus crops.

Eat real food.
Favor protein and healthy fats.
Let carbohydrates behave themselves.
And for heaven’s sake—sit down, slow down, and enjoy the meal.

That approach has survived empires. It might just survive us.

 

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