Housing bubble hasn\'t burst yet (by mannfm11)

We are in a housing bubble and it hasn't burst. History says it hasn'tburst. Housing starts for September 2007 were according to 868,000.Prior to 1997, 868,000 single family homes had never been sold in agiven year in US history. Every day news we hear is fiction. In allyears prior to 1997, the current housing starts would be considered amassive housing boom, something that would surely overheat the economy.

One must question the world news about it failure to elaborateon this subject of speculation and the fiction surrounding it. A bustis when housing starts fall to around 500,000 a year. In reality, thatis where sales fall in a housing bust, at or below 500,000, meaning thestarts need to fall well below that to clear the market of excessinventory.

I brought this up to someone a few weeks ago andthey brought up population growth. I was stunned to hear someone thinkour population growth is something of historic proportions today,something that would induce a decade long sales trend with no let up atrecord levels of home sales. 800,000 homes a year being built hadglutted every national housing market we have seen in the past 100years. What is different this time?

I could understand thecreative financing putting an extra couple hundred thousand units inthe market for a couple of years, but the excess of the past 10 yearsis clearly in the form of 200,000 to 300,000 extra homes a year beingbuilt at a minimum. Population growth isn't the driver of thisphenomenon, speculation is.

I have a government report on the census bureau site.
housing start and under construction report

IF you examine this site, you might find that they left all data outprior to 2006. Go find some data prior to this speculative nonsense,that is prior to 1997 and see how out of shape the current bust is. Itisn't isn't a bust, but a continued construction boom. What this meansis the mortgage bubble and bust that will follow is getting bigger, notsmaller. What is means is that housing continues to boom, depite allthe financial problems surrounding the industry and all the downsizingnews. Downsizing from what? Downsizing to what? Clearly a level ofconstruction that constitutes a boom, not a bust or a working off ofexcess.

This could be why we haven't seen a recession yet?These are figures every politician in history prior to Clinton wouldboast about, not something that would have people crying. It appearsthat we are being called on to bail out a boom, not a bust. One morecrime of the day.

This goes to show how much overconsumptionis being financed in the US. I could buy a system that produced thisnumber of houses every year as something that might be desirable. Butto call this level of construction a bust is an outright lie.