The chart on House-Price-to-Rental Ratio is one of the best illustrations I have seen of the current housing bubble. In many places it is now substantially cheaper to rent then own. In fact, in many places the cost of ownership is more then 150 percent of the cost of renting after calculating in the tax benefits.

Comments?

Interesting. I'm thinking part of the rent ratio has to do with supply and demand. Notice how steeply the home ownership as a percentage has grown since 2000 - less renters equals - less demand & lower prices (or less increase in price anyway), just the opposite for home ownership, more demand leads to higher prices. Even so I think there is certainly some amount of price bubble in the market.

There have been opportunities like none seen in decades for people to get into houses that previously could not!
Some were not ready or did not understand what they were getting into. (Let's see,...uh i-n-t-e-r-e-s-t o-n-l-y = doh!)
Also, now, with more homes back on the market there are opportunities for buyers now to bargain from a position of strength)
And they pound 6% foreclosure rate into your head so hard that you forget that currently less than 1% of mortgages are in foreclosure.
Be discerning of the self-fulfilling prophecy.