You open up by making two provably wrong statements, that this site was started in 2003 and that price declines didn’t happen until 3 years after they were predicted here. In fact the site was started in spring of 2004. The Case-Shiller HPI peaked the following year, although by spring 2004 the bulk of the price increases were behind us, and in terms of euphoric sentiment and panic buying the market was already at or past its peak. At the time, sentiment towards housing was ubiquitously bullish and the purpose of this site — since you are apparently having trouble figuring it out — was (and still is) to provide some rational analysis of the market to counter all the cheerleading from the legions of housing bubble apologists.
You then go on to insult me and everyone who posts here by saying “It doesn’t take much to predict such things.” (I somehow doubt that you predicted anything of the sort back in 2004).
Then you say something else provably wrong, that rents never decline. As davelj pointed out, they did decline here in the 1990s — a fact that you could easily verify yourself if you cared to.
Then, you attempt some tortured logic which as far as I can tell ends up with the ridiculous assertion that because prices didn’t crash in the space of a few weeks, there was never a bubble.
Somewhere in there among three falsehoods, an insult, and the most inept re-definition of “bubble” that I’ve ever heard, you to suggest a number of labor intensive data collection tasks that you apparently think that I — the guy you just insulted — should undertake because, despite their apparent importance, you are insufficiently motivated to do them yourself.
