What could cause prices to not collapse? I think that would be an interesting question on which to speculate.
Right now, there are tons of negatives for housing: interest rates rising, tighter lending standards, lack of income growth, bad savings rate, huge oversupply and little demand to name a few.
I’ve yet to hear good arguments from anyone as to why we are at bottom and housing should take off again from here. I think “they aren’t building any more land” and “everyone wants to live here” should be put to rest.
I would love to hear some good bullish cases for housing – if for nothing else, something that I might not have considered. 40-, 50-, 100-year mortgages? Houses being designed for multiple families to buy/live in together? Houses designed for European-style extended families? Super -low Fed rates, or maybe foreign banks buying MBS that all becomes guaranteed by our gov’t? Huge wage inflation?
None of these scenarios seems as likely to me as prices going down though.
