United States housing bubble

Encyclopedia : U : UN : UNI : United States housing bubble

---

The United States housing bubble refers to an economic bubble in real estate in the United States. Many economists believe the US currently has a housing bubble, following the stock market bubble in the 1990s (called, among other things, the dot-com bubble). A real estate bubble or property bubble (or housing bubble for residential markets) is a type of economic bubble that occurs periodically in local or global real estate markets. It is characterized by rapid increases in the valuations of real property such as housing until they reach unsustainable levels relative to incomes and other economic indicators. This in turn is followed by decreases that can result in many owners holding negative equity (a mortgage debt higher than the value of the property). Just like any type of economic bubble, it is difficult to identify except in hindsight, after the crash. A May 2006 Fortune magazine report on the US housing bubble states "The great housing bubble has finally started to deflate … In many once-sizzling markets around the country, accounts of dropping list prices have replaced tales of waiting lists for unbuilt condos and bidding wars over humdrum three-bedroom colonials." [link]

There are several factors believed to explain the U.S. housing bubble. The Economist magazine said that "the worldwide rise in house prices is the biggest bubble in history" [link], so any explanation must consider global causes as well as those specific to the United States. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said in mid-2005 that "at a minimum, there's a little 'froth' (in the U.S. housing market) … it's hard not to see that there are a lot of local bubbles." President Bush said of the U.S. housing boom in early 2006 "If houses get too expensive, people will stop buying them … Economies should cycle" [link].

Bubbles may only be positively identified by some in hindsight, after a market correction, and consistent with other economic bubbles, there has been debate about whether unprecedented price increases were caused by sustainable economic reasons such as larger demand due to increased population and liquidity, and limited supply, or by mania.

Explanations for the existence of a U.S. housing bubble

Harper's magazine, May 2006, "The New Road to Serfdom: An Illustrated Guide to the Coming Real Estate Collapse."

Robert Shiller's plot of U.S. home prices, population, building costs, and bond yields (from Irrational Exuberance, 2d ed. Princeton University Press). Shiller shows that inflation adjusted U.S. home prices increased 0.4% per year from 1890–2004, and 0.7% per year from 1940–2004, whereas U.S. census data from 1940–2004 shows that the self-assessed value increased 2% per year.

Mania for home ownership

Americans' love of their homes is widely known and acknowledged; however, many believe that enthusiasm for home ownership is currently very high even by American standards. Many have commented anecdotally on this phenomenon, as evidenced by the cover of the June 13, 2005 issue of Time Magazine (seen above). This newfound enthusiasm would be consistent with and explained by other factors and beliefs.

Widespread belief that home prices never fall

This folk wisdom is often heard, and appears to be encouraged by the real estate industry. However, it is manifestly untrue, as evidenced by the relatively recent price history of housing in locations such as New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Japan, Vancouver, Hong Kong, and myriad more. In direct contradiction to this belief, this plot shows the one-year fall between 2005–2006 in the median sale prices (inflation-adjusted) of single family homes in Massachusetts:

Widespread belief that housing is a sound investment

For some this has been undoubtedly true, and for others, not. In fact, Robert Shiller shows that over long periods, inflation adjusted U.S. home prices increased 0.4% per year from 1890–2004, and 0.7% per year from 1940–2004. Shiller also showed comparable results for housing prices on a single street in Amsterdam (the site of the fabled tulip mania, and where the housing supply is notably limited) over a 350 year period. Such meager returns are dwarfed by investments in the stock and Bond markets. If historic trends hold, it is reasonable to expect home prices to only slightly beat inflation over the long term. Furthermore, one way to assess the quality of any investment is to compute its price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio, which for houses can be defined as the price of the house divided by the potential annual rental income, minus expenses including maintenance and taxes on the rental income. For many locations, this computation yields a P/E ratio of about 30–40, which is considered high or very high for the stock market. For comparison, just before the dot-com crash the P/E ratio of the S&P 500 was 45.

The \" Though he did not specifically use it in this way, President George W. Bush's 2004 reelection campaign slogan "the ownership society" reflects the strong preference of Americans to own the homes they live in, as opposed to renting them.

Popularity of home investing and flipping in the media

In late 2005 and into 2006, there are an abundance of television programs promoting real estate investment and flipping [link]. These include

• HGTV's "House Hunters"
• HGTV's "What You Get for the Money"
• HGTV's "Designed to Sell"
• BBC America's "Location, Location, Location"
• HGTV's "Buy Me"
• Discovery Home Channel's "Double Agents"
• Bravo's "", "a six-episode original series chronicling the high-stakes, cutthroat world of real estate in a thriving market."
• Fine Living to release a show in 2006 on home architecture
• Fine Living to release a show in 2006 on "the anatomy of the real-estate deal".
• The Learning Channel's "The Adam Carolla Project" in which the host of Comedy Central's "Too Late With Adam Carolla" (a former carpenter) "guts his childhood home with the goal of flipping it for more than $1 million."
• TLC's "Property Ladder"
• A&E's "Sell This House"
• A&E's "Flip This House"
• TLC's "Flip That House" (not to be confused with A&E's "Flip This House")

In addition to the numerous television shows, book stores in cities throughout the United States could be seen showing large displays of books touting real-estate investment, such as NAR chief economist David Lereah's book [Are You Missing the Real Estate Boom?: Why Home Values and Other Real Estate Investments Will Climb Through The End of The Decade—And How to Profit From Them] published in February 2005. One year later in February 2006, Lereah retitled his book [Why the Real Estate Boom Will Not Bust—And How You Can Profit from It].

NAR chief economist David Lereah's [book] in February 2005.

NAR chief economist David Lereah's [book] in February 2006.

Commenting on the phenomenon of shifting NAR accounts of the national housing market (also see David Lereah's comments below), the Motley Fool reported [link] on 9 June 2006,

"There's nothing funnier or more satisfying … than watching the National Association of Realtors (NAR) change its tune these days. The latest news release from this sunny-Jim industry group finally fesses up to its past fiction, but even when it admits the bubble's going to pop, it can't muster the courage to just come out and say it. … the NAR is full of it and will spin the numbers any way it can to keep up the pleasant fiction that all is well."

Speculative purchases of homes

As median home prices began to rise dramatically in 2000–2001 following the fall in interest rates, speculative purchases of homes also increased. Fortune magazine's article on housing speculation in 2005 said,

"America was awash in a stark, raving frenzy that looked every bit as crazy as dot-com stocks." [link]

In a 2006 interview in BusinessWeek magazine, Yale economist Robert Shiller said of the impact of speculators on long term valuations,

"I worry about a big fall because prices today are being supported by a speculative fever" [link],

and NAR chief economist David Lereah said in 2005 that

"[t]here's a speculative element in home buying now."

Speculation in some local markets has been greater than others, and any correction in valuations is expected to be strongly related to the percentage amount of speculative purchases. In the same BusinessWeek interview, Angelo Mozilo, CEO of mortgage lender Countrywide Financial, said in March 2006:

"in areas where you have had heavy speculation, you could have 30% [home price declines]. … A year or a year and half from now, you will have seen a slow deterioration of home values and a substantial deterioration in those areas where there has been speculative excess.” [link]

The chief economist for the National Association of Home Builders, David Seiders, said that California, Las Vegas, Florida and the Washington, D.C., area “have the largest potential for a price slowdown” because the rising prices in those markets were fed by speculators who bought homes intending to “flip” or sell them for a quick profit [link].

Crash of the It has been said that the dot-com crash in 2000 and the subsequent 70% (or so) drop of the NASDAQ composite index resulted in many people taking their money out of the stock market and investing in what is believed by many to be a more reliable investment: real estate.

Historically low interest rates

Another important consequence of the dot-com crash and the subsequent 2001–2002 recession was that the Federal Reserve dropped short-term interest rates to historically low levels, from about 6.5% to just 1%. The Federal Reserve acknowledges the connection between lower interest rates, higher home values, and the increased liquidity the higher home values bring to the overall economy.

"Like other asset prices, house prices are influenced by interest rates, and in some countries, the housing market is a key channel of monetary policy transmission." —Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, September 2005. [link]

For this reason some have criticized then Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan for "engineering" the housing bubble:

"It was the Federal Reserve-engineered decline in rates that inflated the housing bubble." —BusinessWeek, July 19, 2004, Is A Housing Bubble About To Burst? [link]

The interest rate on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages fell 2 percentage points (from about 7.5% to about 5.5%). The interest rate on one-year adjustable rate mortgages (1/1 ARMs) fell 3 percentage points (from about 7% to about 4%). A drop in mortgage interest rates reduces the cost of borrowing and should logically result in an increase in prices in a market where most people borrow money to purchase a home (for instance, in the United States). If one assumes that the housing market is efficient, the expected change in housing prices (relative to interest rates) can be computed mathematically. The calculation below will show that a 1 percentage point change in interest rates would theoretically affect home prices by about 10% (given current rates on fixed-rate mortgages). This represents a 10-to-1 multiplier between percentage-point changes in interest rates and percentage change in home prices.

The computation proceeds by designating affordability (the monthly mortage payment) constant, and differentiating the equation for monthly payments

:[\mbox = \frac}\times\mbox]

with respect to the interest rate r, then solving for the change in [Principal]. Using the approximation [(1+r/K)^\approx e^] (K → ∞, and e = 2.718… is the base of the natural logarithm) for continuously compounded interest, this results in the approximate equation

:[\frac}} \approx -\left( 1 - \frac}} \right)\frac \qquad \mbox.]

For interest-only mortgages, the change in principal yielding the same monthly payment is

:[\frac}} \approx -\frac \qquad \mbox,]

which yields about a 16% change in principal for a 1% change in interest rates at current rates. Therefore, the 2% drop in long-term interest rates can account for about a 10 × 2% = 20% rise in home prices if every buyer is using a fixed-rate mortgage (FRM), or about 16 × 3% ≈ 50% if every buyer is using an adjustable rate mortgage (ARM) whose interest rates dropped 3%. Robert Shiller shows that the inflation adjusted U.S. home price increase has been about 45% during this period, an increase in valuations that is approximately consistent with most buyers financing their purchases using ARMs. In areas of the United States believed to have a housing bubble, price increases have far exceeded the 50% that might be explained by the cost of borrowing using ARMs. When interest rates rise, a reasonable question is how much house prices will fall, and what effect this will have those holding negative equity, as well as the U.S. economy in general. Shiller does compare interest rates and overall U.S. home prices over the period 1890–2004 and concludes that interest rates do not explain historic trends for the country. The salient question is if interest rates are a determining factor in specific markets where there is high sensitivity to housing affordability.

Exotic interest-only and adjustable rate mortgages

The recent use of the exotic adjustable-rate and interest-only mortgages to finance home purchases described above have raised concerns about the quality of these loans should interest rates rise again. Factors that could contribute to rising rates are the U.S. national debt, inflationary pressure caused by such factors as increased fuel and housing costs, and changes in foreign investments in the U.S. economy.

Evidence for the U.S. housing bubble

"The golden age of McMansions may be coming to an end. These oversized homes—characterized by sprawling layouts on small lots, and built in cookie-cutter style by big developers—fueled much of the housing boom. But thanks to rising energy and mortgage costs, shrinking families and a growing number of retirement-age baby boomers set on downsizing, there are signs of an emerging glut. … Some boomers in their late 50s are counting on selling their huge houses to help fund retirement. Yet a number of factors are weighing down demand. With the rise in home heating and cooling costs, McMansions are increasingly expensive to maintain. … The overall slump in the housing market also is crimping big-home sales. … Meantime, the jump in interest rates has put the cost of a big house out of more people's reach." The Wall Street Journal, June 19th, 2006, [Slowing Sales, Baby Boomers Spur a Glut of McMansions], by June Fletcher.

"Like other asset prices, house prices are influenced by interest rates, and in some countries, the housing market is a key channel of monetary policy transmission." —Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, September 2005. [link]

Fortune magazine, 4 May 2006. "Welcome to the dead zone: The great housing bubble has finally started to deflate, and the fall will be harder in some markets than others." [link] This article classified several U.S. real-estate regions as "Dead Zones," "Danger Zones," and "Safe Havens."

Fortune magazine Housing Bubble "Dead Zones" [link]

"Dead Zones"	"Danger Zones"	"Safe Havens"
Boston	Chicago	Cleveland
Las Vegas	Los Angeles	Columbus
Miami	New York	Dallas
Washington D.C. / Northern Virginia	San Francisco / Oakland	Houston
Phoenix	Seattle	Kansas City
Sacramento		Omaha
San Diego		Pittsburgh

Boston Globe, April 26th, 2006. "Housing slowdown deepens in Mass.: Single-family prices, sales slip in March" [link]

MSNBC Contrarian Chronicles: "[The housing bubble has popped]", by Bill Fleckenstein, April 24 2006.

• "Reports of falling sales and investors stuck with properties they can't sell are just the beginning. Property owners should worry; so should their lenders."

Searching the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service (ARMLS) shows that in early March 2006, the for-sale housing inventory in Phoenix has grown to about 35,000 homes, of which nearly half are vacant (see graphic) [link].

Boston Globe, January 11th, 2006. "Adjustable-rate loans come home to roost: Some squeezed as interest rises, home values sag" [link]

Business Week, December 19th, 2005. "Bubble, Bubble—Then Trouble: Is the chill in once-red-hot Loudoun County, Va., a portent of what's ahead?" [link]

Boston Globe, December 9th, 2005. "Sellers chop asking prices as housing market slows: Cuts of up to 20% are now common as analysts see signs of a 'hard landing'." [link]

"In the last eight years the country has experienced an unprecedented run-up in housing prices, as home prices nationwide have risen by 35 percent (adjusted for inflation)." [link]

Homeowners' equity is 55% of housing value, down from 72% in 1986, according to Federal Reserve data.

The ratio of house prices to median family income is 19% above the 1975-2000 average, according to data from the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight and the Census Bureau.

Evaluations of the U.S. housing bubble

• "The worldwide rise in house prices is the biggest bubble in history. Prepare for the economic pain when it pops" —The Economist, June 16th, 2005, "[In come the waves]."

• "At a minimum, there's a little froth [in the U.S. housing market]" … "It's hard not to see that there are a lot of local bubbles." —Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan [link], May 2005.

• "Froth in housing markets may be spilling over into mortgage markets." —Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan [link], September 2005.

• "It was the Federal Reserve-engineered decline in rates that inflated the housing bubble." —BusinessWeek, July 19, 2004, Is A Housing Bubble About To Burst? [link]

• "The Fed, in effect, has become a serial bubble blower." —Stephen Roach, 2004 [link]

• "[T]he American housing boom is now the mother of all bubbles—in sheer volume, if not in degrees of speculative madness." —The Telegraph (UK) [link], 23 March 2006.

• "A significant decline in prices is coming. A huge buildup of inventories is taking place, and then we're going to see a major [retrenchment] in hot markets in California, Arizona, Florida and up the East Coast. These markets could fall 50% from their peaks." —The Wall Street Journal, [Surviving a Real-Estate Slowdown: A 'Loud Pop' Is Coming, But Mr. Heebner Sees Harm Limited to Inflated Regions], interview with Kenneth Heebner, 5 July, 2006.

• President George W. Bush was asked about the housing boom's impact on the ability of the questioner's children to purchase a home. The President answered "… If houses get too expensive, people will stop buying them, which will cause people to adjust their spending habits. … Let the market function properly. I guarantee that your kind of question has been asked throughout the history of homebuilding—you know, prices for my homes are getting bid up so high that I'm afraid I'm not going to have any consumers—or my kid—and yet, things cycle. That's just the way it works. Economies should cycle." —President George W. Bush [link], 19 January 2006.

• "Some builders will get caught with their pants down, because they built too much. … Prices got a 'little' too high, we got ahead of ourselves. … We need to catch our breath. … It happened in the stock market. How many people purchased Qualcomm, Lucent, I doubled down on Lucent. We became irrational during the stock market craze. … There were lotteries to get into [real estate] deals. I got into one! … Go to Miami to see the excess. … 40% of all loans in 2006 were interest only … Prices went higher because of the artificial energy in the real estate market … that’s what took the punch bowl out of the party. … We made a mistake. It’s going to hurt. You are going to have a double digit drop. Expect it." —David Lereah, Chief Economist of the National Association of Realtors, Quoted at a [Florida real estate meeting, 27 April 2006].

• "There's a speculative element in home buying now" —David Lereah, Chief Economist of the National Association of Realtors, [Reuters May 24, 2005]

• "There's nothing funnier or more satisfying (for me, at least) than watching the National Association of Realtors (NAR) change its tune these days. The latest news release from this sunny-Jim industry group finally fesses up to its past fiction, but even when it admits the bubble's going to pop, it can't muster the courage to just come out and say it. … the NAR is full of it and will spin the numbers any way it can to keep up the pleasant fiction that all is well. … [T]he cracks began to show in subsequent remarks from NAR 'Chief Economist' David Lereah. The head outfit that ridiculed the idea of a housing bubble for years is now crying for Ben Bernanke to bring it back. … The real problem here isn’t the NAR, of course. You have to expect these people to spin the facts for their industry. No, the real problem here is the uncritical press out there, which is all too happy to pepper every contrary indicator or bearish remark with an NAR official’s informed-sounding bubble denial. Never mind if what the NAR folks are saying doesn't seem to make sense (or contradicts what they said just a few months back). … It should have been completely obvious to anyone with a loan calculator and a glance at wage increases that those months of industry bubble denials were just wishful thinking." —Motley Fool, [I want my bubble back], 9 June 2006.

• "Certainly at the high end of the real estate market in some areas, you've seen extraordinary movement. … People go crazy in economics periodically, in all kinds of ways … when you get prices increasing faster than the underlying costs, sometimes there can be pretty serious consequences." —Warren Buffett, 2005 [link].

• "Soros said he believed the U.S. housing bubble, a major factor behind strong U.S. consumption, had reached its peak and was in the process of being deflated." —Reuters news agency, January 2006, report on speech by Billionaire investor George Soros [link].

• "[T]he overall market value of housing has lost touch with economic reality. And there's a nasty correction ahead." —Paul Krugman, 2006, [The New York Times].

• "[A]lthough home ownership may be a wise choice for many people, this particular real estate bubble has been carefully engineered to lure home buyers into circumstances detrimental to their own best interests. The bait is easy money. The trap is a modern equivalent to peonage, a lifetime spent working to pay off debt on an asset of rapidly dwindling value. Most everyone involved in the real estate bubble thus far has made at least a few dollars. But that is about to change. The bubble will burst, and when it does, the people who thought they would be living the easy life of a landlord will soon find that what they really signed up for was the hard servitude of debt serfdom. … America holds record mortgage debt in a declining housing market. Even that at first might seem okay—we can just weather the storm in our nice new houses. And in fact things will be okay for homeowners who bought long ago and have seen the price of their homes double and then double again. But for more recent homebuyers, who bought at the top and who now face decades of payments on houses that soon will be worth less than they paid for them, serious trouble is brewing. And they are not an insignificant bunch. The problem for recent homebuyers is not just that prices are falling; it's that prices are falling even as the buyers' total mortgage remains the same or even increases. Eventually the price of the house will fall below what homeowners owe, a state that economists call negative equity. They can't sell—the declining market price won't cover what they owe the bank—but they still have to make those (often growing) monthly payments. Their only “choice” is to cut back spending in other areas or lose the house—and everything they paid for it—in foreclosure. Free markets are based on choice. But more and more homeowners are discovering that what they got for their money is fewer and fewer choices. A real estate boom that began with the promise of “economic freedom” will almost certainly end with a growing number of workers locked into a lifetime of debt servitude that absorbs every spare penny. … Rising debt-service payments will further divert income from new consumer spending. Taken together, these factors will further shrink the “real” economy, drive down those already declining real wages, and push our debt-ridden economy into Japan-style stagnation or worse. Then only the debt itself will remain, a bitter monument to our love of easy freedom." —Michael Hudson , "The New Road to Serfdom: An Illustrated Guide to the Coming Real Estate Collapse," Harper's magazine, Vol. 312, No. 1872, May 2006, pp. 39–46.

• "[T]he asset-based spending model has given rise to many of the distortions and imbalances evident in the US today. That’s especially true of low saving rates, the housing bubble, high debt loads, and a runaway current account deficit. … To the extent that equity extraction from ever-rising property appreciation was viewed as a substitute for organic sources of labor income generation, hard-pressed consumers went deeply into debt to monetize the windfall. As a result, household sector indebtedness surged to nearly 90% of US GDP—an all-time record … Secure in the asset-driven spending posture that resulted, consumers saw no need to save the old-fashioned way out of earned labor income. That’s why the personal saving rate has collapsed and currently stands near zero. … Federal Reserve policy makers have taken the lead role as proselytizers of a new macro spin that condones the saving, debt, property bubble, and current-account excesses of the Asset Economy. The examples are far too numerous to mention, but consider the following highlights:

*"Chairman Greenspan has made light of traditional measures of household indebtedness—even going so far as to urge consumers to move from fixed to floating rate obligations (see his February 23, 2004, speech, Understanding Household Debt Obligations. Note: All references are to speeches available on the Fed’s website at [www.federalreserve.gov]).

*"Fed governors have also borrowed a page from the Roaring 1990s in denying the possibility of a housing bubble …

"When consumers hear from a Fed chairman that it makes little sense to take on fixed rate debt, they rush to floating rate instruments; not by coincidence, the adjustable rate portion of newly originated mortgage debt shot up in the immediate aftermath of Chairman Greenspan’s comments on consumer indebtedness. And should asset-dependent, saving-short, overly indebted American consumers feel at risk if the Fed assures them that there is no housing bubble—that the asset-based underpinnings of their decision making are well grounded? A record consumption share in the U.S. economy—71% of GDP since 2002 versus a 67% norm over the 1975 to 2000 period—speaks for itself." —Stephen Roach, 2005, [Morgan Stanley Global Economic Forum: Original Sin]. See also James Wolcott's [comments].

• "Lately, I have been asked if we are in a real estate bubble. My answer is, "Duh!" In my opinion, this is the biggest real estate bubble I have ever lived through. Next, I am asked, "Will the bubble burst?" Again, my answer is, "Duh!"" —Robert Kiyosaki, 2005, [All Booms Bust], author of [Rich Dad, Poor Dad].

• "No one who makes a living in real estate really wants to see the end of this immensely profitable boom. For that matter, neither do most homeowners, who have been treating their homes like ATM machines and relying on price boosts to fund everything from retirement to vacations in Aruba. … But please don't shoot the messenger. My job is to report facts and expert opinions, even if the news is unwelcome. And every forecast I've heard from economists and other experts has projected a cooling of the U.S. housing market this year (though how quickly and by how much remain matters of debate), fueled by such factors as rising interest rates and lack of affordability. Even real-estate trade associations are predicting the boom's demise. … Across the country, real-estate agents tell me, the number of days houses sit on the market is creeping up, and inventory levels are on the rise. Both are early warning signs that prices are poised to fall. And according to the latest statistics from [Foreclosure.com], which offers a database of U.S. foreclosure, preforeclosure, government-owned, and bankruptcy properties available to private individuals and tracks the number of these properties, new foreclosures were up 9% in February [2006] over the year before. If this trend holds, the company says, new foreclosures will reach higher levels this year than they have in previous years, especially in places like California and Nevada, where speculators are currently pulling out of overheated markets. … It will take some time—perhaps a few months—for homeowners to come to grips with the fact that their vinyl-clad nest eggs aren't expanding anymore, or, in some overheated markets, may even be shrinking. But once they do, they'll be more likely to guard them, and less likely to tap into them for everyday expenses. According to Freddie Mac, the nation's second-biggest buyer of mortgages, the amount of cash home buyers took out of their homes, which reached an estimated $243 billion last year, will fall by more than half in 2006, to about $117 billion. … Your success in good markets and bad teaches us a valuable lesson in how to weather the changes ahead: Do your homework, and don't get greedy." —The Wall Street Journal, [Is There Still Profit to Be Made From Buying Fixer-Upper Homes?], by June Fletcher, author of [House Poor: Pumped Up Prices, Rising Rates, and Mortgages on Steroids—How to Survive the Coming Housing Crisis]) [italics added].

• "The crux of the debate is house prices. If the inflated prices are justified by economic fundamentals and sustainable, then the 82 percent increase in mortgage debt since 2000 will probably turn out to be innocuous and the risks to the economy minimal. If, on the other hand, prices are out of whack, painful adjustments lie ahead. Unfortunately, the weight of the evidence strongly suggests a bubble. The price of the median home is up an inflation-adjusted 50 percent during the last five years, an unprecedented national increase. … Just as cheerleaders of the high-tech bubble of the late 1990s developed ever more creative explanations for why traditional metrics of valuing stocks no longer applied, the same has been true during the housing bubble. Housing bulls point to immigration, building restrictions, Baby Boomer demand for second homes, and other seemingly plausible justifications for skyrocketing home prices. But examining the value of housing using time-tested and common-sense metrics such as price-to-income and price-to-rent ratios suggest the gains in the bubble areas can't be explained by economic fundamentals. … People are buying in the face of sky-high prices because they've seen so many of their friends or relatives make a fortune in real estate; besides (they tell themselves), everyone knows real estate prices never fall. As with the stock market during the tech bubble, many are basing purchasing decisions not on underlying economic value, but on what they think they can sell a property for in the future—the very definition of a speculative bubble. … Even flat home prices would therefore slow economic growth unless other parts of the economy rapidly accelerate. But a hard landing—meaning a recession—is a real risk. If home prices fall modestly, millions of homeowners will see their equity wiped out. Many of those with the least amount of equity, as we've already shown, are going to face significant increases in their monthly payments. So what has been a virtuous but unsustainable cycle for the economy—higher home prices, more borrowing against home equity, higher spending, increased job creation, even higher home prices—could easily reverse and become a vicious cycle—higher monthly payments, declining home prices, less spending, job losses, foreclosures, even lower home prices." —The Weekly Standard, 10 April 2006, [Housing Bubble Trouble: Have we been living beyond our means?], by Andrew Laperriere.

• "Over the last 25 years, I have warned frequently of these political, economic and historical (but not religious) precedents. The concentration of wealth that developed in the United States in the bull market of 1982 to 2000 was also typical of the zeniths of previous world economic powers as their elites pursued surfeit in Mediterranean villas or in the country-house splendor of Edwardian England. In a nation's early years, debt is a vital and creative collaborator in economic expansion; in late stages, it becomes what Mr. Hyde was to Dr. Jekyll: an increasingly dominant mood and facial distortion. The United States of the early 21st century is well into this debt-driven climax, with some analysts arguing—all too plausibly—that an unsustainable credit bubble has replaced the stock bubble that burst in 2000." —Kevin Phillips, 2006, [American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century].

• "Let's assume for a moment that enough people get fooled, and the refinancing boom gets extended for another year. Then what? The real problem hits. Because if you think Greenspan's being cagey on refinancing, the truth he's really avoiding talking about is that we're in the midst of a huge housing bubble, on a scale only seen once before since the Depression. Worse, the inflated housing market is now in an historically unique position, as the motor of the rest of the economy. Within the next year or two, that bubble is likely to burst, and when it does, it very well may take the American economy down with it." —[Washington Monthly], April 2004

• "There is a sharp debate over whether there is a bubble in the U.S. housing market generally or in certain localities, or whether there is a bubble at all. But the past two days have brought fresh warnings that home prices are unsustainable." —[Forbes 2005 March]

• "There's clearly speculative excess going on," said Joshua Shapiro, the chief United States economist at MFR Inc., an economic research group in New York. "A lot of people view real estate as a can't lose." —[New York Times May 25, 2005]

• "People in much of the world are still overconfident that the stock market, and in many places the housing market, will do extremely well, and this overconfidence can lead to instability. Significant further rises in these markets could lead, eventually, to even more significant declines. The bad outcome could be that eventual declines would result in a substantial increase in the rate of personal bankruptcies, which could lead to a secondary string of bankruptcies of financial institutions as well. Another long-run consequence could be a decline in consumer and business confidence, and another, possibly worldwide, recession. This extreme outcome—like the situation in Japan since 1990 writ large—is not inevitable, but it is a much more serious risk than is widely acknowledged." —Yale University economist Robert J. Shiller, 2005, [Irrational Exuberance] (second edition)

• "Alan Greenspan, the United States’ central banker, warned American homebuyers that they risk a crash if they continue to drive property prices higher. … On traditional tests, about a third of U.S. local homes markets are now markedly overpriced." —[Times Online August 27, 2005]

• "The home-price bubble feels like the stock-market mania in the fall of 1999, just before the stock bubble burst in early 2000, with all the hype, herd investing and absolute confidence in the inevitability of continuing price appreciation. My blood ran slightly cold at a cocktail party the other night when a recent Yale Medical School graduate told me that she was buying a condo to live in Boston during her year-long internship, so that she could flip it for a profit next year. Tulipmania reigns." —Robert J. Shiller, quoted in Barron's article "[The Bubble's New Home]", June 20, 2005.

• "Once stocks fell, real estate became the primary outlet for the speculative frenzy that the stock market had unleashed. Where else could plungers apply their newly acquired trading talents? The materialistic display of the big house also has become a salve to bruised egos of disappointed stock investors. These days, the only thing that comes close to real estate as a national obsession is poker." —Robert J. Shiller, 2005, quoted in Barron's article "[The Bubble's New Home]", June 20, 2005.

• "[E]conomists have been wrong before when they try to call the market. Three years ago, Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, said that it would be only a matter of months before prices began to fall. Prognosticators at the research firm Economy.com declared that the peak was last summer. Celia Chen, the firm's director for housing economics, is now saying that it will come this year." [link]

• "There has never been a run up in home prices like this" —Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research [link]

• "The generalized bubble in housing prices is comparable to the bubble in stock prices in the late 1990s. The eventual collapse of the housing bubble will have an even larger impact than the collapse of the stock bubble, since housing wealth is far more evenly distributed than stock wealth." —Dean Baker, July 2005, "The Housing Bubble Fact Sheet" [PDF file], [Center for Economic and Policy Research].

• In a report called "The U.S. Housing Bubble—The case for a home-brewed hangover", HSBC Securities U.S. economist Ian Morris says home prices are out of whack when compared to rental prices, income and other key indicators.

• "The overheating is greatest in markets such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Washington, New York, and Boston. The takeoff in coastal real estate started around 2000—suggesting that the speculative fever of the late 1990s did not die but instead jumped from stocks to real estate. From 2000 through the first quarter of 2004, single-family home prices are up at an annual rate of 8.2% in the Pacific region, 8% in New England, and 7% in the Middle Atlantic region, according to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. Prices rose 18% in Los Angeles, 14% in Miami, and 13% in Washington in the year through the first quarter, says the agency. … Today's housing prices are predicated on an impossible combination: the strong growth in income and asset values of a strong economy, plus the ultra-low rates of a weak economy. Either the economy's long-term prospects will get worse or rates will rise. In either scenario, housing will weaken." [link]

• "Once a price history develops, and people hear that their neighbor made a lot of money on something, that impulse takes over, and we're seeing that in commodities and housing...Orgies tend to be wildest toward the end. It's like being Cinderella at the ball. You know that at midnight everything's going to turn back to pumpkins & mice. But you look around and say, 'one more dance,' and so does everyone else. The party does get to be more fun -- and besides, there are no clocks on the wall. And then suddenly the clock strikes 12, and everything turns back to pumpkins and mice." —Warren Buffett, quoted in a CNN article, "[Buffett wary of real estate, commodities speculation]", May 08, 2006.

See also

• Real estate bubble
• *British property bubble
• *Irish property bubble
• *Japanese asset price bubble
• *Spanish property bubble
• *Chinese property bubble
• *California property bubble

Further reading

• Barron's, "[The Bubble's New Home]", June 20, 2005. See also this [blog].
• The Economist, December 8th, 2005, "[Hear that hissing sound?]."
• The Economist, June 16th, 2005, "[After the fall]."
• The Economist, June 16th, 2005, "[In come the waves]."
• The Economist, April 20th, 2005, "[Will the walls come falling down?]"
• The Economist, May 3d, 2005, "[Still want to buy?]"
• The Economist, Feb 26th, 2004, "[The American economy: A phoney recovery]."
• The Economist, May 29th, 2003, "[House of cards]."
• The Economist, May 28th, 2002, "[Going through the roof]."
• Fortune magazine, 4 May 2006. "[Welcome to the dead zone]: The great housing bubble has finally started to deflate, and the fall will be harder in some markets than others."
• Fortune magazine, 15 March 2006, "[Lowering the Boom? Speculators Gone Mild]."
• The New York Times, December 25th, 2005, [Take It From Japan: Bubbles Hurt].
• The Wall Street Journal, 5 July, 2006, [Surviving a Real-Estate Slowdown: A 'Loud Pop' Is Coming, But Mr. Heebner Sees Harm Limited to Inflated Regions].
• The Wall Street Journal, June 19th, 2006, [Slowing Sales, Baby Boomers Spur a Glut of McMansions], by June Fletcher.
• The Wall Street Journal, March 17th, 2006, [Is There Still Profit to Be Made From Buying Fixer-Upper Homes?], by June Fletcher.
• The Wall Street Journal, February 10th, 2006, [Is the Party Really Over For the Housing Boom?], by June Fletcher.
• Dean Baker, July 2005, "The Housing Bubble Fact Sheet" [PDF file], [Center for Economic and Policy Research].
• James Bednar, [Home Prices Do Fall: A Look At The Collapse of the 1980's Real Estate Bubble Through the Eyes of The New York Times].
• June Fletcher (2005), [House Poor: Pumped Up Prices, Rising Rates, and Mortgages on Steroids—How to Survive the Coming Housing Crisis], New York: Collins.
• Michael Hudson (2006), "The New Road to Serfdom: An Illustrated Guide to the Coming Real Estate Collapse," Harper's magazine, Vol. 312, No. 1872, May 2006, pp. 39–46.
• Robert Kiyosaki (2000). [Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money—That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!], New York: Warner Business Books.
• Robert Kiyosaki (2005). [All Booms Bust]'', [History in the Making], [All Booms Bust: Making Myself Clear].
• Paul Krugman (2006). The New York Times, "[No Bubble Trouble? The overall market value of housing has lost touch with economic reality.]". See these [blogs] for full article.
• David Lereah (2005). [Are You Missing the Real Estate Boom?: Why Home Values and Other Real Estate Investments Will Climb Through The End of The Decade—And How to Profit From Them].
• David Lereah (2006). [Why the Real Estate Boom Will Not Bust—And How You Can Profit from It].
• Burton R. Malkiel (2003). [The Random Walk Guide to Investing: Ten Rules for Financial Success], New York: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc.
• Burton R. Malkiel (2004). [A Random Walk Down Wall Street], 8th ed., New York: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc.
• N. Gregory Mankiw and David N. Weil (1989). "[The baby boom, the baby bust, and the housing market], Regional Science and Urban Economics, Volume 19, Issue 2, May 1989, Pages 235-258.
• John Allen Paulos (2003). [A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market], New York: Basic Books.
• Kevin Phillips (2006). [American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century], New York: Viking.
• Stephen Roach (2005). [Morgan Stanley Global Economic Forum: Original Sin]. See also James Wolcott's [comments].
• Robert J. Shiller (2005). [Irrational Exuberance], 2d ed. Princeton University Press.
• John R. Talbott (2006). [Sell Now!: The End of the Housing Bubble], New York: St. Martin's Griffin.
• John R. Talbott (2003). [The Coming Crash in the Housing Market], New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc.
• Andrew Tobias (2005). [The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need] (updated ed.), Harcourt Brace and Company.
• Eric Tyson (2003). [Personal Finance for Dummies], 4th ed., Foster City, CA: IDG Books.
• Benjamin Wallace-Wells, "[There goes the neighborhood]", Washington Monthly, 2004 April.
• Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi (2003). [The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle Class Mothers and Fathers are Going Broke], New York: Basic Books.

Sources: Business and Opinion Newspapers and Magazines

• Barron's magazine
• Bloomberg media
• BusinessWeek magazine
• The Economist magazine
• Forbes magazine
• Fortune magazine
• Harper's magazine
• The Motley Fool
• MSNBC
• The New York Times newspaper
• The Wall Street Journal's [Housetalk], by June Fletcher
• Washington Monthly
• The Weekly Standard

Sources: Weblogs

• [Ben Jones' US housing bubble blog]
• [patrick.net's San Francisco bubble blog]
• [Boston bubble blog]
• [Paper Money - A US Real Estate Bubble Blog]
• [San Francisco bubble blog]
• [Bubble Meter Blog]
• [Bay Area Housing Bubble blog]
• [Housing Panic blog] An irreverent, highly-opinionated take on the housing bubble
• [Global House Price Crash Website] A site dedicated to news about the global property boom and collapse and discussion forums
• [Professor Piggington's Evidence of a California Bubble]
• [Center for Economic and Policy Research], CEPR regularly releases reports on the U.S. Housing Bubble

 

---

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

?