Housing Bubble: Bankrupting Suburbia
At the same time we in America are experiencing record deficits and overwhelming debt, there is a coexistent housing bubble. A result of a seller's market in housing, this current real-estate market bubble is unsustainable, and could result in the ruination of many millions of American families, if they are caught with a mortgage debt that they cannot pay off when the inevitable market crash occurs. If any Federal Reserve member bank is caught in a downward spiral toward bankruptcy, it is logical that they will make a move to call in all their outstanding loans, including home mortgages. More

Real Estate Bubble Burst? Wonderful!
Realtors and real estate developers around the country are bemoaning the fact that the real estate market has slowed down in recent months. Rising interest rates, shortages of building materials, and the weather hurricanes Katrina and Rita specifically have served to stop and in many places reverse the upward trend of both existing home sales and new housing starts. Wonderful! What has been a boon for real estate brokers and developers has not been so good for people at the bottom of the economic scale. Many workers who five years ago could have bought a home of their own have been priced out of the market; both commercial and residential real estate development has bulldozed distressed properties that provided housing for poorer people and displaced those people in the process; and gentrification, the process of rehabbing existing homes and converting industrial buildings for upscale lofts and condos has shifted the demographics of entire sections of cities, in the process also displacing poor people in favor of the well-to-do. More

Focus: Is the global housing bubble set to burst?
For a decade world house prices have soared, creating the biggest boom in history. Can it last? Richard Woods and David Smith report HAVING made a tidy packet from property in the UK, Daniel Lee is broadening his horizons. The 30-year-old entrepreneur from Winslow, Cheshire, is buying a £180,000 flat in The Torch, a new tower block being built in Dubai. “I just fancied Dubai,” said Lee. “You get a lot for your money compared with the UK, the weather’s guaranteed, there’s potential for capital growth, and it’s a great position ... In three years house prices have rocketed in South Africa by 95%, in China by 68%, in Australia by 56% and in America and Thailand by 29%. In Britain they rose 50%. The world has never seen a boom of such breadth and scale..” More