Robert Shiller is perplexed. Justin Fox frets:
As with much of the economic semi-recovery of recent months, the housing revival has been a combination of (1) bounceback from those scary moments last fall and winter when it seemed to many that the financial world might be about to end and (2) rational response to government subsidies. I'm betting that tax credit will be renewed, but the Federal Reserve has already announced that it plans to wind up its $1.25 trillion mortgage-buying bingewhich has helped keep rates way, way down and thus spur home salesin the first quarter of next year. If mortgage rates start rising next spring and unemployment is still rising, watch out in housing.