North County Times: Housing Bubbles and the Web sites that love them

The North County Times has this piece about the housing bubble sites.

No, the homes aren't selling as quickly as they have in the past, but they are selling, which implies that for every seller who believes there is a housing bubble, there are buyers who either disagree or don't care.

Or maybe the buyer just doesn't know about the housing bubble. Until about 4 months ago the media did a pathetic job of informing people of the housing bubble. Now the media is playing catchup.

This difference of opinion has fostered a booming topic for online blogs and Web sites.

That's right. Praise be for the web and the blogosphere.

Everybody's favorite investment topic gets dozens of related blogs on blogspot.com, a site where anybody can launch their own pages with little or no skill, risk or expertise in the position they are advocating.

There's http://bubbletracking.blogspot.com/, http://housingpanic.blogspot.com/, http://bubblemeter.blogspot.com/, http://ushousingbubble.blogspot.com/, http://thehousingbubble.blogspot.com/ and even http://thehousingbubble2.blogspot.com for those who didn't get enough doom and gloom from the first site.

People can indeed launch blogs with little skill or expertise in the field they are blogging about. However, these housing bubble bloggers have spent countless hours examining and thinking about the complex issues involved. The so called 'experts' that the media often interview are usually paid shills like David Lereah or real estate agents who have a vested interest in keeping the bubble expanding.

Some folks feel so strongly about the subject they start whole sites dedicated to persuading you to sell now before it's too late. They include http://patrick.net/wp, http://www.housingbubblebust.com/, http://housebubble.com/ and the perpetually popular Professor Piggington's Econ-Almanac for the Landed Poor at http://econo-almanac.com./ Note, each includes plenty of ads offering to help you sell that nest egg-killer of a home of yours.

Grim posted in the comments section of the article "Last time I checked newspapers were full of ads as well. In fact, a quick glance at my local Sunday paper gives me at least a pound worth" Indeed, the mainstream media have profited handsomely from the housing bubble.