Lacker, Jeffrey

The distinguishing feature of the current transition is the magnitude of the adjustment in the housing market, which comes at the end of what has been an amazing, decade-long run. The homeownership rate increased by 4 full percentage points from 1995 to 2005, and the number of houses built per year increased by 46 percent over that 10-year period.

Some observers have called this extraordinary behavior of the housing market in recent years a bubble. I don't find that term useful or particularly accurate, since the behavior of housing appears to have been based on solid fundamentals.