Housing is regional, and I’d guess the sales are in places like Florida and the South, not in the cold northeast where it’s very expensive to live.
The housing bubble most refer to is around metropolitan areas. For example, a decent house in Watts or Crenshaw (bad parts of Los Angeles, history of crime and riots) goes for about $500k.
Outside of these areas, the housing market is realistically priced and won’t be affected by any burst of metropolitan-based housing bubbles.
Anecdotally things have gone very soft in some areas. In terms of hard number nationally I've found the following:
- The inventory of unsold existing homes is up 2.4 percent from December (National Association of Realtors). The total number of homes available for sale at the end of January was up 35.7 percent from a year earlier.
- Realtors are now holding the largest inventory of unsold existing homes since 1998.(National Association of Realtors)
- The inventory of unsold new homes is up more than 20 percent compared to last year. (Commerce Department).
- The inventory of new homes is now the highest since 1996 and represents 5.2 months of supply (Commerce Department).
A bubble isn't a problem as long as you own your home and have a fixed rate mortgage, don't work in the mortgage business, don't sell home furnishings, aren't a home building, aren't a real estate sales person, etc. If you're holding onto a couple of spec houses you're probably in trouble.