Are We There Yet?

Are we there yet? Children ask that question endlessly on a long car trip. Federal Reserve officials are asking it about their drive to curb inflation.

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The sizzling housing market is cooling off ─ or maybe it isn’t.  The answer depends on the numbers you use and the analysts you believe.  The numbers support different conclusions and the analysts disagree.

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Judging by news reports and opinion pieces in trade publications and mainstream media, the risk of a housing bubble probably ranks as the top  concern of many economists and real estate industry executives today. But fear of resurgent inflation is a close second.  Home prices and a housing shortage are feeding the bubble fears, as we’ve discussed before; consumer prices and an increasingly rocky labor market recovery are creating the inflation jitters.

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Two major issues dominated the news in late July:  Inflation – whether it is,  is not a problem or is likely to be one; and the prospect that millions of renters would be evicted from their homes as a federal moratorium barring evictions for nonpayment of rent expired.

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Is the housing boom creating a dangerous bubble?  In every boom-and-bust real estate cycle – and there have been a lot of them – experts have suggested and consumers have believed that the boom they were seeing, unlike all the others, would not be followed by a decline.  And every boom-bust cycle in the past has proven them wrong.