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Why are we ignoring the Housing bubble?
More than half of homes in the US are selling above list price. People are playing a lottery to see if they’ll win the honor of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a home. The Case-Shiller US National Home Price Index looks like a rocket ship launching into space. You’d be forgiven for flashing back to the aughts but listen closer, that’s not Fearless playing, it’s Fearless (Taylor’s version).
There’s a growing sense of unease. Renters at the lower end of the market have seen their rents rise in some places even as they’re more likely to be suffering the economic harms of the last year. Would-be homeowners are furious as they lose bidding war after bidding war, looking for someone to blame as they watch their peers land a home and lock in a low mortgage rate. And homeowners are riding high for now, exhaling sighs of relief that they made it into the exclusive club and eagerly watching their wealth skyrocket, worried about what might happen to change that.
The last crisis, when a housing bubble and risky behavior by Wall Street took the blame for the Great Recession, looms large in our collective memories. And with America’s unemployment numbers still not where we want them and the unequal economic recovery from the pandemic, the fear of another crash looms. It’s unsurprising, then, that the questions “are we in a housing bubble?” and…
