This week’s Voice column is an apologia, of sorts, for why bearish housing observers like myself spend so much time obsessing on downtown San Diego. We don’t have anything against the place; it just happens to be the place where the bubble has had the most dramatic effects.

Not so long ago, Downtown exhibited all the trappings of a full-tilt speculative bubble. Inventory was practically non-existent, units were bought and sold several times before even being inhabited, and panicky buyers were willing to pay any price to get on board.

Now that the market has started to exhaust itself, downtown enjoys San Diego’s most obvious imbalance between supply and demand. Inventory is up tenfold since spring of 2004, and has doubled in the past year. We now are entering the seasonal inventory-growth period, so that number will surely climb.