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Ask the
Economist
Dr. Svenja
Gudell
Chief Economist, Zillow
D
r. Svenja Gudell is the Chief
Economist of Zillow. She joined
the company in 2011 and was
named chief economist in August
2015. Under Dr. Gudell's leadership, Zillow
produces monthly reports on housing trends
for more than 450 metros nationwide, with
data often available down to the ZIP-code
level. In addition, Dr. Gudell and her team
publish original research on various real estate
topics, ranging from rental and mortgage
affordability, negative equity and forecasting,
to policy, generational and mortgage research.
Dr. Gudell has presented to various federal
agencies and at numerous industry conferences,
and has been widely quoted in national and
local media.
Economic growth was only 0.7 percent in
the advance Q4 estimate and has been
slow for Q1 in the last few years. The most
recent BLS employment summary showed
job gains of only 151,000 for January. When
you see these headwinds turning around,
and what will it take? When looking at the
GDP numbers and taking them apart, we came
in slightly below consensus, it was a bit of a drag
that consumer spending only modestly rose. It
would have been nice to see a little more there.
