We are not seeing real market interest rates, the govt/banks are keeping inventory off the market, and every dolt who buys a house this year gets $8K to “help them out.” Every FB specuvestor is painted as a “victim” and the criminals who got us into this mess (banks, regulators, etc.) are allowed to claim that “nobody could see this coming.”
Until all this changes, we will not know what the market is **really** doing. The current “healthy” market is an illusion.
[/quote]
By this measure the market is ALWAYS an illusion.
It is the result of multiple factors affecting demand and supply. At any point in time, some of these factors are “artificial” such as government subsidies, tax breaks, rent inflation, low interest rates, high interest rates, banks constraining supply, builders overbuilding, builders underbuilding.
These factors then collude (or more correctly, those who manipulate these factors are colluding) to result in the market at any given point in time.