People too effing stupid to understand what the consequences of building ten years worth more houses than you have families to live in them would be ... fully deserve to be depressed.
It took an idiot not to understand that the housing bubble would pop.
Complete idiots who were so damned stupid they got in peoples faces and tried to argue this wasn’t coming (which resulted in more people investing in real estate that will take two to three decades to break even at best) fully deserve both everything they get, and a heap of ridicule besides.
Bingo! I had so many arguments w my business collegues who were so brainwashed. I did not buy a house in the bubble thank god and was told i was an idiot, missing out, etc.
Only an idiot could not see that prices were a reflection of easier money and nothing in real value.
In my way of thinking , the only thing that really should push home prices up are increased wages and earning, increasing population via immigration, etc.
Not one single person during the bubble era could explain to me why housing was going up 10% plus a year while average salary much less a % and how that was real or sustainable.
My sympathies lie with those who saw their rents increase from $200 in 1990 to $500 in 1995 to $1,000 in 2000 to $2,000 in 2005, and wondered with mortal terror whether rents would reach $5,000, most of their monthly salary, by 2010. Then came the banks and the government, promising that they could freeze their costs at $2,000 with zero downpayments. “Why rent for $2,000 when you can own, and lock in those low payments?”
I didn’t buy because I was single, and didn’t need an entire house. The ones who are screwed are simply those who cannot move to a better labor market because their house is worth less than their mortgage; I’m not even feeling bad for those who bought at $400,000 in 2000 and whose house now costs only $300,000, but meanwhile, it’s half paid off.
The over-supply is NOT because supply accelerated so quickly, by the way, but because demand dropped so suddenly.