Preventing the Next Housing Bubble The pain of the deflation of a housing bubble cannot be avoided by trying to keep the bubble inflated, or by trying to deflate it slowly. The only way to avoid these problems is to prevent the bubble from inflating in the first place through some form of intervention in the mortgage market. Intervention can take the form of a market-based intervention demanded by investors and ratings agencies, and it can also come about through direct government regulation. Necessary Intervention The regulated free-market system in place at the turn of the millennium allowed the creation of the [Read More...]

Price Decline Influences There are a number of factors that will influence the timing and the depth of the price decline. There are a number of psychological factors and technical factors in play. [1] These include: Smaller Debt-to-Income Ratios Increasing Interest Rates and Tightening Credit Higher Unemployment Foreclosures Decrease in Ownership Rates Government Intervention Smaller debt-to-income ratios impact the market because buyers tend to put a smaller percentage of income toward housing payments during price declines. Increasing interest rates decrease the amount borrowers can finance and use to bid on real estate, and tightening credit decreases the size of the borrower [Read More...]

Future House Prices For all our wisdom and collective experience, none of us knows what the markets will do next. Like an ocean current or a raging river, a financial market charts its own course. It is fickle and feckless and flows without regard to our hopes and dreams. The ebbs and flows of financial markets are meaningful to us, but in reality they are just movements in price; nothing more. Price rallies make homeowners blissful and renters bitter, while price declines make homeowners gloomy and renters gleeful. These feelings and emotions are independent of movements in price. The market [Read More...]

Psychological Stages of a Bubble Once a bubble starts to form, it will go through several identifiable stages: enthusiasm, greed, denial, fear, capitulation, and despair. Each of these stages is characterized by different speculator emotional states and different resulting behaviors. There are outside forces that also act on the market in predictable ways in each one of these stages. Most often, these outside factors serve to reinforce the market’s herd behavior and exacerbate changes in price. Precipitating Factor There is often a precipitating factor causing the initial price rally that pushes prices above their supported fundamental values. A bubble rally is [Read More...]

The Bubble Bursts When a bubble in a financial market pops, it does not explode in spectacular fashion like a soap bubble; it is more comparable to a breached levee which releases water slowly at first. [1] Once the financial levee is ruptured, the equity reservoir loses money at increasing rates. It washes away the imagined wealth of homeowners who bought late in the rally or used home equity lines of credit to fuel consumer spending until the reservoir is nearly empty and the torrent turns to a trickle. Ultimately, the causes of failure are examined, the financial levee is repaired, and [Read More...]

The Housing Bubble Prices went up a large amount during the Great Housing Bubble, but what makes this price increase a bubble? To answer this question it is necessary to accurately measure price levels and review historic measures of affordability to establish these price levels are not sustainable. [1] Measuring house prices is not a simple task, and there are many methods market watchers use to evaluate market prices. These include the median, the average cost per square foot, and the S&P/Case-Shiller indices. Price levels in financial markets represent the collective result of individual actions. There are techniques to measure the actions [Read More...]

The Credit Bubble The Great Housing Bubble was not really about housing; it was about credit. Most financial bubbles are the result of an expansion of credit, and the Great Housing Bubble was no exception. Housing just happened to be the asset class into which this capital flowed. It could have been stocks or commodities just as easily, and if the government gets too aggressive in its actions to prevent a collapse in housing prices, the liquidity intended to prop up real estate prices will likely flow into some other asset class creating yet another asset price bubble. The root causes of the [Read More...]

Investment Value The United States Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics measures the Rent of primary residence (rent) and Owners’ equivalent rent of primary residence (rental equivalence). They make this distinction because a house has both a consumptive purpose and an investment purpose. The consumptive value is measured by rent or rental equivalence. There is legitimate financial reason to pay more than the rental equivalence price. The normal rate of house appreciation–not the unsustainable kind witnessed during the Great Housing Bubble–can provide a return on investment. The source of this added value is the leverage of mortgage financing and the hedge against inflation [Read More...]