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I looked at that website and Piggington appears to be mixing his personal views with statistics from the SD Union and Business Week. That is a misleading technique and I would not quote that kind of statement from Piggington.

Your graph of home prices and rents is a classic example of putting two kinds of accounting numbers on one chart. When you do that it 's difficult to interpret the chart and it's easy to draw incorret conclusions from the chart. Home prices are an asset account while rents are an income/expense account.

Because homes are expensive they are almost always purchased by taking out a loan and therefore the home price that buyers can afford depends greatly on the interest rate of the mortgage. Rents are paid from the renter's income rather than through a loan and therefore the amount a renter can afford doesn't depend on interest rates. What your chart shows is simply that mortgage interest rates declined greatly between 2001 and 2006 and thus affordable home prices increased much more than rents. That's all it shows. You cannot conclude that home prices are too high or rents are too low from that chart.

You did this before on another chart--mixing asset and income/expense numbers. That is not a good technique and it leads to strange-looking charts that are difficult to interpret. I don't care if Piggington is your source; it's still a bad technique. I would try to use charts that compare asset values against other asset values and income/expense numbers to other incomes/expense numbers. Then your charts will be more meaningful and won't be thrown off by the effect of interest rates on real estate prices.

Typo correction: my "PS I really don't get people who get upset because a person won't share their view on anything"

should have read:

"PS I really don't get people who get upset because a person won't share their view on *something*."

I'm sure we agree on a whole host of issues, but housing certainly isn't one of them.

As for your comment that "I think you may be a Democrat too, and I haven't seen you post on anything much other than real estate and gold." If I really wanted to point out the impending housing correction in an effort to disillusion FReepers or influence them to vote for demorats, then my posting pattern would be a lot different. For instance, I space out my posts on housing and I stick to them. I don't attempt to bombard FR with posts in an attempt to influence the majority. I seek out a tiny minority who are both interested in the subject, and who hopefully have a higher than average degree of expertise in real estate. So I really don't think any rational human being can label what I am doing as some sort of influence campaign. Quite the contrary, I'm looking to duologue with FReepers whose knowledge on the this subject is pretty much immune from shallow election politics (that can only serve to cloud the real issues involved).

I am a party line Republican when it comes to voting because there is no better party to vote for. But that doesn't stop me from discussing the issues as I see them in a frank and honest way. If the issues I discuss suggest there is room for Republicans to become more conservative then so be it. That only serves to put pressure on Republicans to become more REPUBLICAN. Our loose money policy and are profligate Congress are not behaving like conservatives, and it is one of the primary drivers behind our declining dollar, not to mention a host of asset bubbles, real estate being just one (and the most recent) of them.

And just for your information, I began my conservative career as a member of YAF (Young Americans for Freedom). I joined YAF because I considered the College Republicans as a bunch of squishy liberals. I served in the USMC. I worked on Reagan's second presidential campaign, and I was an intern for Congressman William Danneymeyer. I also worked on Christopher Cox's first campaign for Congress, as well as Dornan's campaign against Sanchez, and Andrea Seastrand's campaign against Capps in Santa Barbara. In addition, I have worked on a number of grassroots campaigns to include the No Aid and Trade campaign against the Soviets, the campaign to wake up Americans against delivering South Africa into the hands of the Communist ANC, the campaign to end US and UN financing of the terrorist PLO, demanding an investigation and sanctions re: the downing of KAL flight 007, the campaign to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan, the Get US Out! of the UN campaign, the campaign to oust the Sandanistas in Nicaragua, the campaign against Aristide's Communist dictatorship in Haiti, and numerous other campaigns that received both local, state and national attention.

In short, I am a Reagan Republican through and through. Back in those days, religious conservatives, traditional conservatives, libertarians, and even a few objectivists were engaged in an ongoing and very healthy debate that both sharpened, strengthened and continually purified the conservative movement, as opposed to the namby-pamby, "compassionate" clap-trap we are forced to endure today.