How Housing Bubble #2 Bursts (Charles Hugh Smith) \ stacker news ~econ

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How Housing Bubble #2 Bursts (Charles Hugh Smith)charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2025/06/how-housing-bubble-2-bursts.html

630 sats \ 5 comments \ @optimism 12h econ

Another housing bubble bursting analysis, this time from another analyst.

There's an interesting thing discussed in here: occupancy fraud.

Note that the number of owner-occupied homes was flatlined for 12 years--from 2005 to 2016. Then it suddenly leaps up by 10 million in a few years--from 76 million to 86 million. Did 10 million households all win the lottery, or is the bulk of this astounding increase the result of fraudulent investors posing as owner-occupant buyers?

Bitcoin fixes this?

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100 sats \ 4 replies \ @Undisciplined 12h

Interesting. That issue wasn't on my radar because I've lived in that very light colored middle part of the country for the past decade.

Bitcoin fixes this by eating the monetary premium in real estate and reducing it's price to the use value.

52 sats \ 3 replies \ @optimism OP 11h

Bitcoin fixes this by eating the monetary premium in real estate and reducing it's price to the use value.

So I've taken the Schiller U.S. National Home Price Index reindexed at 2018Q1

And then taken Yahoo's monthly price history for BTC, since 2018Q1, then indexed it as 2018Q1=100 too.

Then, Schiller in BTC = Dollar index / BTC index * 100:

Which leaves us with the question: wait... what housing bubble? lol

100 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined 10h

It might be that what's mostly happening is just that Americans' wages aren't keeping up with inflation and we're perceiving it as bubbles because we can't fathom that much inflation.

75 sats \ 1 reply \ @optimism OP 10h

This is what most people say it feels like. Everyone I know is complaining about inflation and their perception definitely does not match CPI numbers. But also an awful lot of these people are millennials and do they even remember real inflation? It's also a lot easier to deal with when you're in your 20s than when you're in your 30s or 40s.

This would mean the real value of the dollar is much lower than what the Fed makes us believe, which I think more likely than BTC being overvalued 10x right now. But unfortunately we can really only learn this in the future. Either way it's likely a combination of things?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 9h

I think it's much more likely that bitcoin is undervalued 10x than overvalued that much.