TAXES/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “It wasn’t supposed to take long for the Trump tax cuts to hobble housing prices, particularly in the high-tax, high-cost metro areas where the new law was poised to rip federal incentives to buy new homes. Nearly nine months later, those warnings have not materialized. While the nation’s housing market is showing signs of weakness on several fronts — particularly in new-home construction — prices across the country are continuing to climb. That’s true even in the million-dollar-plus markets of California and Washington, D.C., which appeared most at risk for a hit when the bill was pending. Economists see only faint effects from the new law so far in housing data. They’re small, and they’re contained to a few high-priced, highly taxed ZIP codes, largely in blue states. They’re nothing close to the carnage that real estate groups warned about when the law was under debate last fall. This followed other recent Giuliani moments, including his claim on Sean Hannity’s radio show that conspiracy is not a crime, and his curious philosophical assertion on ‘Meet The Press’ that ‘truth isn’t truth.’”
–Jim Tankersley, “The Trump Tax Cuts Were Supposed to Depress Housing Prices. They Haven’t.,” The New York Times online, August 27, 2018