US Housing Bubble Enters Stage Two: Suddenly-Motivated Sellers

Stage One is long and (initially) slow, fueled by excess central bank money creation or foreign demand or some other source of liquidity that encourages large numbers of people to buy houses. At first, sellers remember the peak prices from the previous bubble and aren’t willing to sell at anything less than that (in finance-speak, they’re “anchored” at the highest price they could have gotten last time around). So demand initially outstrips supply, causing home prices to rise, slowly at first and then explosively as increasingly-desperate buyers become willing to pay any price while mortgage lenders, seduced by fat fees and confident that they can securitize and offload any kind of dicey mortgage, lower their standards to include pretty much the whole of society.

Stage One usually ends with price spikes in the hottest markets so extreme that they generate headlines. Like these:

San Diego home prices spike

Home Prices Spike Near Murrieta, SoCal Median Hits Record Level

Orlando Home Prices Spike 10 Percent Annually in April

Another month, another record for Denver home prices

Phase Two of a typical US housing bubble begins when sellers read these headlines and note that prices are now above what they could have gotten in the last bubble. With the memory of how badly, during the subsequent bust, they’d wished they’d sold at the peak still reasonably fresh, they realize that they’ve been given a second chance to cash out, move to a cheaper, less-frenetic place, and coast on their real estate riches. So they call a realtor and list their house. As do a bunch of their neighbors. Supply, out of the blue, jumps.

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