[seldom_seen]

Interesting article on the cratering housing market in Arizona:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'F')or-sale signs in some new subdivisions are so common that Janet L. Yellen, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, recently described them as “the new ghost towns of the West.”'

The influx of buyers from California, many of them individual speculators, was so strong that builders overestimated demand and constructed a lot more homes than there were people wanting to live in them, said John Burns, a real estate consultant in Irvine, Calif. He noted that investors bought roughly a third of homes sold in the Phoenix area last year, according to mortgage application data.

link

[emersonbiggins]

Look at the future; it's here today.

[web]http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061201/BIZ03/612010399/1001/BIZ[/web]
Detroit News Article

[gwmss15]

in 1997 in south east asia there was a property boom that suddenly collaped leaving thousands of unfinished office building, condos, and full shopping malls that to this day are still abandoned and now slowly rotting away.

the best example is in KL called plaza raykat a 500 meter tall office/shopping and apartment complex with a metro station connected to it all that is complete is the metro station with a narrow steel walkway to connect it to the road as the building is just a huge hole in the ground as it has been for 11 years now. a small number of these old half built projects around aisa have been restarted and finished but most are still there as a constant reminder of what happens when there is too much growth and speculation on propery.

the USA situation is a little different as it is small single home not 50 story building so others may buy these small homes and finish them or just remove them and build a huge apartment building instead but like in asia it could take 10 years before anything happens.

[savethehumans]

Emerson, I LOVE your avi! That's such a cute kitten!

Gee, so the housing bubble has burst. What a shocking surprise! NOT.

Happy holidays, realtors and homeowners with refinanced mortgages!

[auscanman]

I took a course this past term 'Land Use Planning and Local Government Law' which showed how massive the urban sprawl industry truly is. A broad cross-section of individuals earn their living through this industry: lawyers, municipal officials, builders, surveyors, masons, lumberjacks, etc. The law relating to this field has developed to be incredibly (and needlessly) complex with lots of red tape, making it one of the most lucrative fields of law to go into.

As the only industry left that actually makes anything in North America, if it falls it won't be pretty (even if like me you view urban sprawl as being undesirable).

I maintain that if governments open the floodgates to immigration a faltering housing market can be propped up. More people= more competition for housing, and people are willing to go into a lot of debt to put a roof over their head. If the US housing crash starts to take effect here in Canada the first response I'd expect is a large increase in our annual immigrant intake... meanwhile quality of life and wealth will be further eroded.