More news from the Harvard housing study we mentioned earlier. According to Eric Belsky, executive director of Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, we’re not headed for a major crash:

Strong household growth, combined with record incomes and wealth, will lift housing investments to new highs next decade. Each generation is achieving higher homeownership rates, incomes, and wealth than the one ahead of it, with the leading edge of the echo baby boom now in their 20s and the baby bust now in their 30s starting off on especially high paths. This is despite the fact that each younger generation has successively higher shares of foreign-born and minority household heads with lower average incomes than same-age native-born whites.

Undermining the soft-landing thesis, the study also notes that of the 149 largest metropolitan areas in the country, the number in which median house prices are at least four times the median household incomes increased from 13 in 2001 to 49 in 2005.
Soft Landing Seen By Harvard Study [MarketWatch]


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  1. “Developers may be starting to recognize that they are selling shelter as opposed as to an exotic financial instrument.”

    Ha. I like that description – you would totally think that’s what a house was the way people have been acting about them the past few years.

  2. Translation: (1)People need a roof over their heads. (2)If they are gainfully employed they will seek (and sacrifice in order) to fulfill that need. (3) Developers may be starting to recognize that they are selling shelter as opposed as to an exotic financial instrument.