Economic Dashboard
Checking data… View diagnosticsWhat this page does. Tracks the macro indicators from FRED that drive affordable housing deal outcomes: rates, construction costs, labor market, CPI, and housing supply. Each series refreshes on its own FRED release schedule — daily for rates, weekly or monthly for the rest. The timestamp at the top reflects the most recent series we fetched.
What this page is not. A trading screen or live data terminal. Numbers reflect the latest FRED release, not a streaming feed. FRED revises some historical values; the "View diagnostics" link shows which series have stale or revised data.
How to use it. Pair the rate trend with the Deal Calculator before locking interest-rate assumptions, and verify CPI inflation against your OpEx growth assumption in the 30-year pro forma.
Macro conditions that determine deal outcomes. Interest rate movements affect equity pricing and permanent debt terms. Construction cost indices influence per-unit budgets and change-order exposure. Labor market tightness impacts contractor bids and development timelines. Housing supply and vacancy data define the market case for new units.
Whether underwriting a LIHTC deal, sizing a construction loan, assessing rental demand, or shaping housing policy, these numbers move outcomes: the rate environment that prices tax credit equity, the CPI trajectory that determines rent restrictions’ viability, pipeline pressure signals from starts and permits data, and labor costs in contractor estimates.
Construction PPIs feed feasibility models, Treasury yields and mortgage spreads set permanent debt terms, SOFR for variable-rate exposure, and vacancy and homeownership rates anchor market studies. All sourced from FRED, the Federal Reserve’s public data repository, and updated on each series’ schedule. In affordable housing finance, assumptions are made months before closing, and the market rarely waits.
Screening tool only. Macro indicators shown here are for early-stage deal context and market orientation. They are not investment advice, underwriting inputs, or a substitute for current lender quotes, appraisals, or professional financial analysis.
Data source: FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Data refreshed daily via automated workflow.
Census snapshot
Construction Costs 6 indicators
Producer price indices and cost proxies that impact per-unit construction budgets and feasibility.
Housing Market 9 indicators
Starts, permits, prices, and affordability signals that shape pipeline and underwriting assumptions.
Housing Cycle Indicators 3 indicators
Leading / coincident / lagging indicators for reading the housing cycle. New home sales lead starts by ~3-6 months; residential construction spending follows permits/starts by ~6-12 months; construction employment is the lagging signal. Use these alongside permits, starts, and Months' Supply (above) for cycle-stage timing on LIHTC application windows and pricing-locked debt.
Financial & Interest Rates 6 indicators
Rates and spreads that move equity pricing, permanent debt terms, and bond execution costs.
Labor Market 6 indicators
Employment, earnings, and labor supply indicators relevant to labor cost pressure and demand.
Implementation notes: FRED data is fetched client-side via the FRED API “observations” endpoint. Some series update monthly or quarterly; charts show the most recent 5 years (or max available if shorter).
Mortgage Credit Access — Statewide Trends CFPB HMDA
Annual mortgage origination volume, denial rate, mean loan size, and multifamily-only originations for Colorado from the federal Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA). Tightening credit (rising denial, falling originations) precedes slowdowns in multifamily starts and reduced LIHTC bond demand. Multifamily series is directly LIHTC-adjacent — competitive lending environment for LIHTC capital stacks.
🏔 Colorado Regional Housing Predictions have moved to the Colorado Deep Dive — Market Trends page, where you can explore 2025 forecasts across all five Colorado regions: Denver Metro, Western Slope, Colorado Springs/Pueblo, Boulder/Northern Front Range, and Mountains.
Prediction Markets: Real Estate, Finance & Economic Outlook Polymarket
Live prediction market prices from Polymarket — crowd-consensus probabilities for economic outcomes that directly affect Colorado real estate, construction costs, and housing affordability. Prices reflect real-money positions and update continuously.
Colorado Real Estate & Affordability Impact
Federal Reserve & Interest Rates
Real Estate & Home Values
Recession Risk & Economic Growth
Employment & Labor Market
Colorado context: Denver Metro typically trades at ~1.35× the national median home price. CO unemployment runs ~0.4 percentage points below the national rate. Front Range tech employment is the key marginal demand driver for metro housing.
Methodology & Data Sources
Data Sources by Section
- Construction Costs — BLS Producer Price Indices via FRED: WPUFD49207 (Inputs to construction), WPUFD4111 (Construction materials — nonresidential building), PCU236200236200 (Nonresidential building construction), WPU10170503 (Steel reinforcing bar), WPU0811 (Lumber), PCU327310327310 (Ready-mix concrete), CES2000000008 (Construction hourly earnings), ECIALLCIV (Employment Cost Index)
- Housing Market — Census Bureau / Census-HUD via FRED: HOUST (Total housing starts), HOUST5F (Multifamily 5+ unit starts), PERMIT (Total building permits), PERMIT5 (Multifamily permits), UNDCONTSA (Units under construction), COMPUTSA (Multifamily completions), CSUSHPISA (S&P/Case-Shiller HPI), MSPUS (Median sales price), RHORUSQ156N (Homeownership rate), RRVRUSQ156N (Rental vacancy rate)
- Financial & Interest Rates — Federal Reserve / ICE via FRED: DGS10 (10-yr Treasury), DGS2 (2-yr Treasury), DFF (Fed Funds), SOFR (Secured Overnight Financing Rate), MORTGAGE30US (30-yr Fixed Mortgage), BAA10Y (Moody's Baa spread), T10Y2Y (Yield curve 10Y-2Y)
- Labor Market — BLS via FRED: UNRATE (Unemployment rate), PAYEMS (Nonfarm payrolls), CIVPART (Labor force participation), CES0500000003 (Average hourly earnings), JTSJOL (JOLTS job openings), ICSA (Initial jobless claims), CPIAUCSL (CPI All Items), CUUR0000SAH1 (CPI Shelter)
- Census Snapshot — U.S. Census Bureau ACS 1-Year and 5-Year Estimates: DP02 (Social), DP03 (Economic), DP04 (Housing), DP05 (Demographic) profile tables. Select a geography using the Census Snapshot dropdown to link to the source data for that jurisdiction.
Methodology
All FRED series are fetched daily by a GitHub Actions workflow and stored in data/fred-data.json — no API key is required in the browser and no CORS issues occur. Charts show the most recent 84 months (7 years) or the maximum available history if shorter. Year-over-year changes are computed from the same-month prior year; for non-monthly series the nearest prior period is used.
The Predictive Modeling section uses illustrative probability distributions aligned with published GSE and independent forecaster consensus. Expert consensus incorporates: Fannie Mae Economic & Housing Outlook (monthly), Freddie Mac Quarterly Forecast, Federal Reserve Monetary Policy Reports (semiannual), NAR Economic Outlook, MBA Mortgage Finance Forecast, Zillow Research, Moody's Analytics, and CoreLogic market insights. These are not actual prediction-market contract prices.
The Historical Accuracy table tracks documented housing outcomes against the forecaster consensus probability at the start of each year. Realized outcomes are sourced from FRED (CSUSHPISA, MORTGAGE30US, HOUST, RRVRUSQ156N), NAR, and the U.S. Census Bureau Housing Vacancy Survey. A "Correct" designation means the highest-probability outcome category materialized.
Data is updated daily. Series availability depends on publication lag from the originating agency — some series update monthly, others quarterly. Stub placeholder data (marked _stub: true in the JSON) will be replaced by real FRED observations on the next automated fetch cycle.
Market-priced macro expectations — Kalshi prediction markets
What the prediction-market consensus says about Fed moves, CPI, and home prices. Useful for sanity-checking the FRED point-in-time numbers against a market-priced forward curve. Each card shows probability bands for outcomes at a horizon date.
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Multifamily rent benchmarks — Yardi Matrix National Multifamily Report
Industry-standard asking-rent growth + occupancy by metro. Yardi tracks ~17M stabilized multifamily units nationally. Cross-check against the Apartment List + Zillow ZORI panels above — divergence usually signals one source has stale data.
Colorado metros
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