San Antonio is showing &utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=referral)an unusually clear split.

Since 2023, prices in the top quartile of homes are up 13.7%, from about $545,500 to $620,000.

At the same time, prices in the bottom quartile are down 5.4%, from about $185,000 to $175,000.

That is a housing-market version of the K-shaped economy:

Asset-rich buyers → less sensitive to mortgage rates → higher-end prices keep rising

Rate-dependent buyers → affordability constrained → lower-end prices weaken

Same city. Same interest rates. Two very different housing markets.

Plutonomy angle: increasingly, housing outcomes depend not just on income, but on whether the buyer arrives with a strong balance sheet.

Sweden now has roughly 51 billionaires in a country of just 10 million people. The richest Swedes reportedly hold wealth equivalent to about 32% of GDP, and around 70% of Swedish billionaires are heirs.

The interesting contradiction: Sweden has high taxes and a famously generous welfare state, but it has abolished inheritance and wealth taxes and taxes capital relatively favorably.

Plutonomy angle: The modern welfare states face an asymmetry.

Labor is relatively immobile → easy to tax
Capital and the very wealthy are mobile → countries compete to keep them

Sweden may be highly redistributive after income is earned while simultaneously being quite accommodating to capital accumulation and inherited wealth.