by Charles Hugh Smith
Of Two Minds
Corporate / private equity / STVR investors are all fair-weather owners of housing.
Let’s indulge in some basic logic:
1. All credit-asset bubbles burst.
2. U.S. housing is a credit-asset bubble.
3. The U.S. housing bubble will burst.
The only variables are how and when Housing Bubble #2 will burst. That’s today’s topic.
I’ve been writing about housing since 2005, as Housing Bubble #1 was inflating. I’ve participated in / observed housing rising sharply in the late 1970s and the late 1980s, followed by deflation / stagnation. Housing Bubble #1–circa 2003-2008–was characterized by all the classic signs of a mania: