Science Vs - Who Killed Affordable Housing?

Episode Date: June 22, 2023

Housing has gotten SO expensive — for many of us, buying something seems totally out of reach. And even renting a decent apartment is a struggle these days. Who, or what, is to blame for these high prices? We track down the culprit with urban planner Prof. Nicole Gurran and attorney Prof. Sara Bronin.   Find our transcript here: https://bit.ly/ScienceVsAffordableHousing In this episode, we cover: (00:00) The Crime (03:48) Suspect 1: Greedy developers (07:20) Suspect 2: AirBnB (14:20) Suspect 3: Zoning (24:00) The Twist! This episode was produced by Rose Rimler along with Wendy Zukerman, with help from Joel Werner, R.E. Natowicz, Meryl Horn, and Michelle Dang. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact checking by Eva Dasher. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Music written by Bumi Hidaka, Emma Munger, and Bobby Lord.  Thanks to everyone we reached out to for this episode, including Dr. Yonah Freemark, Prof. Stephen Sheppard, , Prof. Sonia Hirt, Prof. Solly Angel, Dr. Sherry Bokhari, Dr. Salim Furth, Dr. Norbert Michel, Dr. Max Holleran, Prof. Manuel Aalbers, Prof. Kirk McClure, Dr. Kate Pennington, Prof. Joseph Gyourko, Prof. Jessica Trounstine, Jenna Davis, Dr. Jake Wegmann, Prof. Hui Li, Dr. Edward Kung, Dr. David Wachsmuth, Dr. Brian Doucet, Dr. Aradhya Sood, Dr. Stan Oklobdzija, and Dr. Andrew Whittemore. Special thanks to Meg Driscoll, Flora Lichtman and a big thanks to our voice actors: Aliza Rood, Annie Minoff, Chantelle Young, Valentina Powers, Alena Acker, Krystian Zun, and Moo.  Science Vs is a Spotify Studios Original. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us and tap the bell for episode notifications.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, what's your emergency? We have a situation here. I can't believe this is happening. I've lived here my whole life. I never thought it could happen here. They were a beautiful young couple. One worked as a nurse, the other a teacher. One was vivacious.

The other lit up the room with a smile. Everything was going to plan. Until it wasn't. I never thought this would happen to people like us. It was clear from the scene that they never stood a chance. The crime? Isn't it obvious? High house prices and high rents.

Making it hard to find anywhere to live. I can't find any apartments in my price range. $3,000 for a studio? Are you kidding me? And the victim is our hopes and dreams. During the pandemic, rents went up by almost 20%, and house prices, they shot up by even more. But this is not just a pandemic thing. It's been a problem for years, and it's been brutal.

As for the perp, well, accusations are flying around all over the place. So many baby boomers are active in the housing market that it's become much more difficult for millennials to buy a house. When I was trying to buy my first home, I wasn't buying smashed avocados for 19 bucks. Greedy corporate landlords. The short-term rental industry has been repeatedly accused of driving housing prices up by contributing to the housing shortage. But who's really to blame here? When it comes to our housing hopes and dreams,

who's murdered them? Today on Science Versus, we're searching for clues, sifting through evidence to find out exactly why housing is so expensive. And what we've uncovered will shock you. When it comes to affordable housing, there is not a lot of it. But then, there's science. Science vs. Affordable Housing is coming up just after the break. What does the AI revolution mean for jobs, for getting things done?

Who are the people creating this technology and what do they think? I'm Rana El-Khelyoubi, an AI scientist, entrepreneur, investor, and now host of the new podcast, Pioneers of AI. Think of it as your guide for all things AI, with the most human issues at the center. Join me every Wednesday for Pioneers of AI. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you tune in. It's season three of The Joy of Why, and I still have a lot of questions.

Like, what is this thing we call time? Why does altruism exist? And where is Jan Eleven? I'm here, astrophysicist and co-host, ready for anything. That's right. I'm bringing in the A-team. So brace yourselves. Get ready to learn.

I'm Jan Eleven. I'm Steve Strogatz. And this is... Quantum Magazine's podcast, The Joy of Why. New episodes drop every other Thursday, The Joy of Why. New episodes drop every other Thursday, starting February 1st. Welcome back. Today, we are getting to the bottom of why housing is so damn expensive.

Rose Rimler, senior producer, has been tackling this question brick by brick. Rose, why are you so interested in this? Well, like anybody who's been alive recently, I have noticed that housing is really expensive. And a couple of people I know who have bought a house recently have told me that it was so hard, it was so stressful, that they said it was actually one of the worst experiences of their lives. And whenever things are emotional and difficult, I always want to know the facts. Like, no, okay. It's almost like a coping mechanism.

Like, okay, so why? Why? What's happening? And when I asked myself that question and started looking around, I realized that I didn't really know why. It almost was like a fact of life, you know? Like, yeah, housing is really expensive and it's just getting worse all the time. But when you think about it more, you're like, but why? That's not like a law of physics. Yeah. Yeah. So I want to know what that explanation is. Like, why? And who can we blame?

Who is responsible for killing our dreams? Okay, so who is suspect number one? Developers. People really hate developers. I found a book by a professor who teaches real estate development. And he asked his students on the first day of class what words come to mind when they hear the phrase real estate developer. And they say stuff like, and this is quote, ripoff artist, greedy, bloodsuckers, bulldozers, used car salesmen, devils, rich white men, opportunists. Yeah,

I don't even know why, but I like want to blame them. But what's the thinking here? Well, they're out to make a profit off housing while we're all weeping about how expensive it is. That feels bad. Right, right. A lot of people think that developers are actually literally responsible for raising the prices of neighborhoods. Like, I actually went to a community meeting where I live in Brooklyn, where they were debating whether or not to let a developer build a new apartment building in the neighborhood. And someone at the meeting said, we should absolutely say no to this because it will

raise rents in the neighborhood. Okay, so is that true? So brand new apartments are going to be more expensive than older ones, like in a freshly built building, in the same way that new cars are more expensive than older cars. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Not surprising. So the new market rate building on your block is not going to be affordable to people who aren't making good money. But here's what might be surprising. It's generally not true that the building itself raises the prices of other buildings in the neighborhood

or raises the rents in the neighborhood. Huh. I mean, sometimes your rent will go up, but it's not because of the new development. It's because you're living in a desirable neighborhood that's seeing prices rise. And in fact, that's why the developers chose to put a new building there. Because your rent won't be rising faster with that development.

No, that's what studies find. Oh, interesting. It might even help a little bit by absorbing some of the demand. Huh. I think what's happening here is people are mixing up correlation and causation. I would never accuse you, Wendy, of doing such a thing. Oh, heavens no. I'd never accuse you, Wendy, of doing such a thing. Oh, heavens no. I'd have to quit my job, basically.

Not allowed to host science verses if you're falling into traps like that. The rising prices were coming anyway, but when you see the crane putting up a new building, you think that's what caused it. It's a very obvious target to focus on. And you know, this idea that developers are all greedy bloodsuckers, I looked into this and most of them aren't consistently making huge gobs of profits.

So, are developers off the hook? Rose, Rimla, are you here on a microphone saying we are wasting our energy blaming developers? I think that you should buy a box of chocolates, look up the mailing address of the 10 biggest real estate

developers in the United States, and mail them a box of chocolates. No, I'm just kidding. I think that I don't think they're the heroes, but I don't think they're the heroes, but I don't think they're the villains. It's almost like that's too obvious. Right, yes.

It can't be suspect number one. The book's too short. The lights go out, then suddenly they come back on and there's like one guy like holding a candlestick and everyone's like, ah, pointing at him. And he's like, wait, no, I'm not, it's not me. I just, they put a candlestick in my hand. Okay, okay.

So who is suspect number two? Suspect two is a company that people either love or love to hate. Do you have any guesses? Amazon? Airbnb. Airbnb. It's Airbnb. Ding, ding, ding.

And, you know, similar companies that do, like, like short term rentals in people's houses. But Airbnb, you know, they draw a lot of the criticism. People blame them for contributing to this whole affordable housing crisis. I talked about this with Nicole Garan. She's a professor at the University of Sydney. Well, I mean, that's the real irony because the origin story began with the founders of Airbnb as being the victims of an unaffordable housing market in San Francisco. That's right. The founders, you know, tech industry dudes. I'm sure they were. I'm not surprised.

There was a conference in San Francisco and they noticed that there was a really high and unmet demand for hotel beds. And they thought, well, hey, you know, why don't we stick a mattress, a blow up mattress, hence the air, B&B in our, you know, lounge room and, you know, make a bit of money and help with our own rent this month. And they did it and the idea caught on and they made a lot of money from it. You know, at first when Nicole heard about Airbnb, she thought it could be a win-win because if people are renting out spare rooms or maybe their whole place if they go out of town, then it's actually from like like an economist's viewpoint,

it's really efficient. But that's not what happened. These days, most Airbnbs are entire homes. They're not a spare room or couch in someone's actual home. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I remember the transition almost. Like, I remember starting to go to Airbnbs and realizing it was always, you could tell by the painting on the wall, right?

You're like, no one lives here, right? Like that's like this weird generic art on the wall that, you know, that no one could be offended by yet we all despise. Right. Live, laugh, love. Okay, so how big of a problem is this? Like how many houses are now Airbnb houses? That is a question that Nicole wanted to ask.

Specifically, she wanted to ask it about Sydney. So she scraped from Airbnb all of the units that were being advertised year-round. So not just like a week or two here and there, but they're always Airbnbs. So she considered those otherwise would have been potentially on the market as long-term rentals. And she compared that with the number of rentals available for people who live in Sydney.

So it was like the rentals available for tourists through Airbnb versus the rentals available for people who actually live in Sydney. And yeah, what she found was like pretty surprising. The number of properties when we did that initial study that seemed to be permanently available as Airbnb rentals was equivalent to about half of the rental vacancy rate in Sydney. Okay, so for every two places that were available for rent in the normal renty way, there was one place available on Airbnb. Yeah. It had been a while since Nicole looked at this paper. So she actually, when we were on the call, she double checked it. She pulled up her paper.

Oh, oh, well, I was right. It's exactly right. So you can run with that. God, that's horrific. It's like you're surprised all over again. I am. It's huge. And, you know, Sydney is on the high end, but this kind of thing is happening all over. There was recently a paper that looked at Airbnbs in cities all over the United States, and they found that the median for how many rentals were turned into Airbnbs was about 12%.

12%, so like one in eight, one in nine houses were just sitting around waiting for Airbnb. That still feels like a bite out of the rental market that would matter, right? Well, it does, and it has a consequence. Like that same U.S. study that I just talked about, they estimated that after controlling for other factors, Airbnbs were responsible for 20% of the increase in rent

during the time period that they looked at. So in other words, they found that if your rent went up $100, $20 of that was because of Airbnb. Wow, wow. Okay, so Airbnb is the culprit here. They've stuck a knife in our dreams. They've got blood on their hands, for sure. They've got a knife in.

By the way, we did reach out to Airbnb to ask about all this, and they didn't want to comment. But you know, to be fair to Airbnb, they are not the main murderer. So big picture, I asked Nicole, But, you know, to be fair to Airbnb, they are not the main murderer. So big picture, I asked Nicole, how much do these vacation rentals matter? If Airbnb never existed, would housing be affordable in Sydney? No, we had housing affordability problems before Airbnb. Uh-huh.

Because if my dear Watson, or my... I think you're Watson. I'm Watson in this. Okay. No, that's cool. That's cool. Okay. Well, if Sherlock, Airbnb in that study was responsible for 20% of the increase in rent, that does leave this big chunk, 80% still on the table.

Suspect number three. This next suspect is looking very guilty. There is blood spatter everywhere. DNA just like dripping off their hands. And, you know, we're kind of getting to the point in the episode where, like, we need a real suspect. And I've got one for you, and I'm going to tell you

all about it after the break. Ooh! Welcome back. Today, we're looking into our housing crisis and asking why is it so expensive to buy or rent a place to live? We've talked about developers putting in new buildings. Seems like they are not the culprits. Airbnb, kind of a culprit, more like an aider and a better, I guess. But we still haven't found the main killer of our housing dreams.

Rose Rimler, who's up next? A lot of academics I spoke to about this kept bringing up this one word over and over, zoning. I got into it with Sarah Bronin. She's a professor of planning and law at Cornell University. Do you think zoning has become kind of a sexy topic? Well, I've always thought it was a sexy topic, but I think others

have started to realize how important zoning is. And so it's come up in lots of different kinds of conversations. Zoning. Yes. Have you sat at a dinner party or been stuck next to someone on an airplane who has brought this up? Zoning? I can't say I have, and I have some very nerdy dinner conversations. This is all about the rules that a city makes about what can be built and where it can be built. In some of the earliest zoning laws, Wendy, there were rules about how you had to process

your whale blubber outside of town. You're really trying to make zoning fun. I can see that with the whale blubber, but I keep zoning out. If you don't pay attention to zoning, it will get you. Ah, pay attention to what I'm going to say next. Okay. You do need to listen to understand something very important that we're going to talk about. So the zoning that we need to talk about today is what's called single-family detached homes. So these are like your classic suburban-style house, leave-it-to-beaver-esque. And there are zoning laws that a lot of towns put into place that make it easy to build those and harder to build

other kinds of housing like, you know, apartment buildings or duplexes. This is important to understanding our housing crisis because in all of those other kinds of properties you're talking about, semi-detached, townhouse, like you can squish more housing, more people can live in an apartment complex than in a suburban type house. That's right. So basically... Yeah, I mean, imagine if you took that leave it to beaver house and you kind of cut it in half and you made a leave it to beaver duplex, then you could put two families on the same piece of land. They'd each get half the space, but each of the space they did have would cost less. So you've got like two families for the price of one. And one thing

Sarah wanted to know was just how common is this kind of zoning code? We know this is a problem, but it's been hard to study because, you know, these laws are made just town by town. So during the pandemic, Sarah led this big group project to read and analyze all the zoning codes in the entire state of Connecticut, which is where she lives. We read over 32,000 pages of zoning text across 180 jurisdictions. And how did you stay awake? Oh, this is what I love to do personally. So reading zoning codes is like reading a treasure map. In order to understand it, you have to go from one chapter to the next and follow all the cross-references and go down rabbit holes to then come up with the answer. The answer is always in the zoning code somewhere, and it really is, I think, a fun intellectual puzzle to try to figure out exactly what the zoning code means. So the treasure she was hunting for was an answer to this question. How much of the state is set aside for these leave-it-to-beaver type of houses? Do you want to guess how much of the state of Connecticut is like, suburbia, please?

I mean, Connecticut basically sounds like a synonym for suburbia. So I would say 95%. It was 91%. 91%! Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Wow. 91% of the state. And this doesn't mean it's impossible to build smaller, denser housing in those areas, but you have to fight through a lot of red tape to get it done. Uh-huh. So, for example, there's this rule Sarah dug up that I want to tell you about

because it is particularly galling. In some towns, there's a law on the books that says if you want to build an apartment building, you have to add three parking spaces for each studio apartment. What? Three parking spots per studio. And it's like, why? What is the point of that minimum parking requirement on housing? Is it to encourage car storage? Is it to ensure that development is orderly? Or is it actually to prevent those apartment buildings from being built in the first place?

So potentially just a sneaky way to make it harder. Of course, uh-huh. Oh my gosh, that is so goal-ing. There are also zoning codes that are about what they call minimum lot sizes. That says you have to have a certain amount of land per house. So in Connecticut, Sarah found that a lot of towns require almost two acres of land per house. Is that in farming communities or no? No, not necessarily.

It's about half the state. So that includes a lot of just ordinary suburbs. That is ridiculous to think how many houses could have been built there and how many people could be living there. Rules like this probably help explain why the average American house has gotten bigger and bigger. In fact, it's roughly doubled in size since the 1950s. Oh, wow. And this is important for our conversation because smaller homes with less land are less expensive. So they're easier for first-time buyers to purchase, people that make less money to purchase.

And there just aren't that many of these so-called starter homes. Right. And this whole thing is where the NIMBYs come in. Have you heard of this expression? Yes, not in my backyard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The NIMBYs are people who make these rules and say, like, we don't want apartment buildings or smaller, less expensive housing in our backyards.

What happens is they show up at neighborhood planning meetings and they say, like, I don't want any change. I want to shoot down that development project. Is this the boomers? Is this that time in the Housing Crisis podcast where we talk about the boomers? Yeah, I mean, there is a study from Massachusetts that looked at who showed up to vote no on these development ideas. And yeah, they tended to be older people.

And they had lots of different reasons they gave for opposing new development. They said they were worried about the environmental impact of the project or the traffic the new buildings would bring in. So they might think that they have good reasons, but

if every community says not here, then where? Then it's never going to be built anywhere. It's the perfect example of, oh, we need more housing that's affordable for my kids, but not in my backyard. And we know that at a deeper level, this is also about keeping people out of the neighborhood that some people don't want to move in. People of color, poor people. People have said, like literally they have said,

we want to keep the zoning this way because we don't want people of color to move into the neighborhood or poor people. We want to keep these people out. Right, the coded message. You talk about building coding, but the coded message of we don't want things to change is like we want to keep it white. Yeah. And you can see that in the data. We have research that looked at areas that are zoned in this way versus areas that are a little bit looser with their zoning. And we find that

this kind of neighborhood tends to be whiter. So I'm guessing this is, even though that study you told us about, was it based in Connecticut, this is not a Connecticut thing. No, it's not even necessarily a suburban thing. This is true in major American cities. Los Angeles is 74% single family zoned. Seattle is 80% single family zoned. Wow. It's like in the movie of our housing crisis. This is where the montage happens and you have all of these zoning academics going into the archive, like pulling out the zoning laws. You just see people from across the country being like 74%, 90%, going to their treasure. Wow.

That's exactly what's happening because Sarah's leading this whole project to make a national zoning atlas. But that's exactly what it is. It's real hot. Isn't that sexy, Wendy? Doesn't that make zoning incredibly sexy? Zoning is sexy.

I'm ready to buy the T-shirt now. I'm ready. Ask me about exclusionary zoning at my next dinner party. So the bottom line for us today about zoning is that research shows that places with more red tape from zoning are more expensive. So this zoning is the killer? A lot of people would say yes. In fact, I talked to Sarah about this whole murder mystery that we're playing. Well, it's funny. I just played Clue last night with my family. It was Miss Scarlet with the dagger in the conservatory. Perfect. And I heard from lots of academics that essentially zoning is

Miss Scarlet. But I don't think we can end there. Because, you know, this is the part of your murder mystery where we've got the classic third act surprise. Oh. There's a twist. You know, they were loading up this suspect into the paddy wagon, taking him downtown. Yes.

Something just didn't sit right in my gut. You know how detectives, hard-boiled detectives like me can just get a hunch. Oh yeah, yeah. It's like something doesn't smell right. What bus? What? Who are we going to blame next? Well, the thing is that some cities have experimented with rolling back these zoning laws and allowing for denser housing. And we don't necessarily see house prices drop when that happens. Oh. One study looked at zoning changes across the U.S.

and found that, on average, they haven't resulted in any affordable housing. What? But why not? I mean, it just seems like you rezone, you get more duplexes, more apartments. Those are more affordable. Bada bing, bada boom. Bada bing, bada boom. Why didn't this bada boom?

You're leaving me on bada. Well, one reason for that is that, you know, the moment the zoning laws change, it's not like developers come running. They're like, oh my God, let me get my tool belt on. You know, they're going to build if God, let me get my tool belt on. They're going to build if it's a profitable time for them to build. But even in places where we see building,

we don't necessarily see housing getting affordable. So what's going on? So that's a great question. And I've been trying to figure it out. And I've talked to, at this point, dozens of academics from different fields. I've read a lot of papers. And this is how I would put it. In Econ 101, they talk about supply and demand.

You know, we've been talking mostly about the supply side of the equation. Mm-hmm, building more houses. Yeah, like the supply of housing. But we also have to think about the demand for housing. And demand for housing has gone up. So as Columba would say, there's just one more thing. One more thing I have to tell you. So hold tight. Back in the 80s, there was a bunch of changes to the banking industry. And rules changed about how financial institutions

could lend money, like for mortgages. And after that, banks could lend a lot more money to a lot more people. And so a lot more people had access to credit after that happened. And they could take out mortgages. And they could take out bigger mortgages. So now people who maybe couldn't have gotten a loan before

or couldn't have gotten a loan that size now can, but so can the person across the street, and now we're all bidding each other up and up and up and making the prices go up. Of course, of course, right? Because if whatever, if you and me, if we couldn't get access to a million-dollar loan, let's say, we could not buy a million dollar house. And so credit has just like screwed around with the demand.

It means so many more people can even put in the bid for these ridiculous priced houses. And, you know, this also is why there are bubbles when interest rates change. It's all about how much money people can borrow. And you know, if prices go up, that makes housing more valuable and that attracts investors. So then you got all these investors who don't necessarily want to live in it, but who just want to park their money there. Yeah. It is not just like big corporate investors. It's everyone who has a retirement fund because retirement funds typically have a chunk invested in real estate stocks.

It's a very common stock to own. I'm sure my retirement fund puts stock in real estate. I'm sure yours does. So we're all part of it. All right, Rose, what should we be doing now? Well, I mean, I think what we're learning is that it's not just a matter of building a bunch of new apartments or houses

or restricting Airbnbs. Although, you know, all that stuff could help a little. It's really about changing this whole financial system. At that point, Wendy, we are out of the realm of science and citations and data that I could bring to you. And we're in a whole new podcast, maybe called Politics Versus. That's above my pay grade. And you know what, Wendy? Sherlock Holmes doesn't revive the body at the end of the mystery. He just solves it. And today we solve the mystery we set out to

solve. That is true, my dear Watson. Nope, you're Watson. What does Watson say? He doesn't say anything. He doesn't say anything. All right, well then. That's right. Thank you, Rose. That's right. Thank you, Rose. That's science versus. Ed Rose, how many citations are in this week's episode? There are 94 citations this week. Ooh, you went to town this week on those citations. If people want to find them, where should they go? They can follow the link to the transcript that they'll see in our show notes. And the transcripts with citations is going to be right there.

Excellent. Wendy, I hear you're doing TikTok now. I am. I am. I've gone visual. You pivoted? I'm pivoting to visual. I'm. I am. I've gone visual. You pivoted? I'm pivoting to visual. I'm staying. Audio is really my friend, but I'm giving it a go. If you want to see visual Wendy, find me on TikTok. I'm at Wendy Zuckerman. And next week, our episode is on the science of sex drive.

Rose, what are you excited about in this episode? I was really interested to learn about a brand new hormone I had never heard of before with a fantastic name. Yeah, yeah. I was so surprised that like scientists are kind of still discovering hormones at all and hormones related to our sex drive. Yeah, who knew there were like new hormones being discovered? All right, we'll tune in next week to find out more. Thanks, Rose.

Thanks, Wendy. This episode was produced by Rose Rimler, along with me, Wendy Zuckerman, with help from Joel Werner, Ari Natovich, Meryl Horn, and Michelle Dang. We're edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact-checking by Eva Dasher. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Music written by Bumi Hidaka, Thanks to everyone that we reached out to for this episode, including Dr. Yona Fremar, Professor Stephen Shepard,

Professor Sonia Hurt, Professor Solly Angel, Dr. Sherry Bokhari, Dr. Salim Firth, Dr. Norbert Mikkel, Dr. Max Holleran, Professor Manuel Albers, Professor Kirk McClure, Dr. Kate Pennington, Professor Joseph Jerko, Professor Jessica Traunstein, Jenna Davis, Dr. Jake Wegman, Professor Hui Li, Dr. Edward Kung, Dr. David Walsh-Smith, Dr. Brian Doucette, Dr. Aradja Sood, Dr. Stan Oglobja, and Dr. Andrew Whitmore. Special thanks to Meg Driscoll, Flora Lichtman, and a huge thanks to all of our voice actors, Aliza Rood, Annie Minoff, Chantelle Young, Valentina Powers, Elena Acker, Christian Zun, and Mu.

Science Versus is a Spotify Studios original. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your pods. Follow us and tap the bell on Spotify to get notifications when new episodes pop up. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to next time. Okay, now as of the time of recording these citations, we did not have a name for this podcast.

Rose, could you just tell us some of your suggestions? The mystery of the missing mortgage. I love it. The curious case of the costly castle. Nice. The home of the Baskervilles. What's that? What's that?

You know, like the hound of the Baskervilles. But it's the home of the Baskervilles? The Sherlock Holmes? I don't know. Oh, yeah, we've established you haven't read Sherlock Holmes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Big Little Rents. What's that?

Oh, like Big Little Lies? Yeah. Okay, keep going. Murder on the Homeowner's Express? Yes. Maybe that will be it. You like that one? Murder on the Homeowner's Express.

I have one more. What have you got? Gone house. Like Gone Girl. Yeah. Gone house.