Dive Brief:
- Two articles in HousingWire.com paint contrasting views of whether the U.S. housing market is poised to keep growing or has gotten ahead of itself and entered another bubble.
- The bubble argument is that there is a growing gap between what houses cost and what middle-class Americans can buy – if they can get a mortgage – and that a market recovering without first-time home-buyers is "a false recovery built upon a sandy foundation above a slippery slope."
- The opposite analysis says that inventory and days on the market are rising now that prices are rising more slowly, and that first-time buyers will benefit from increased inventory.
Dive Insight:
Perhaps what these articles point out is the importance of local, rather than national, data. If a builder is in a market where there are jobs to be had at wages that can support mortgage payments, maybe the national picture does not matter too much. Or is it more like dominoes? It's obvious that there is more than one answer to just about any question about U.S. housing's trajectory right now.