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IPFS News Link • Housing

Ugly Reality: Whitney, Ritholtz Issue Bearish Calls on Housing Market

• NakedCapitalism.com/
 
Consider price relative to income. From 1977 to 2010, the median US home price was 4.1 times median household income….Home prices are still above that mean. Oh, and that mean is artificially elevated due to the 2002-07 boom. It’s the same with home prices relative to rentals, or housing value as percentage of GDP…. Further, we should not assume that prices merely mean revert back to historic levels. What usually happens when markets get wildly overvalued – and a ~3 standard deviation price move sure qualifies — is they get resolved not by reverting to the mean, but by careening far beyond it. In other words, brace yourself for further downside. Extend and pretend is finally about to run into ugly reality.

thelibertyadvisor.com/declare