by Calculated Risk on 11/21/2005 01:12:00 AM

From the WSJ: What's Behind the Boom James Haggerty of the WSJ looks at the future for the housing market:

Almost everyone agrees that prices can't keep rising this fast much longer. The debate now is whether the boom will lead to a soft landing, with gentler price increases, or to a long, painful bust, in which prices fall considerably in some places before buyers regain confidence.

However the current boom ends, longer-term forces are reshaping the housing industry. Here is a look at some of them.

If you are looking for an answer to the hard or soft landing question, Mr. Haggerty doesn't provide it. But he does provide an overview of ten factors impacting housing - from limited space in certain areas to risky loans to homeowners using their homes as a "piggy bank".

Haggerty does offer this chart to show that housing might not be overvalued (at the median):



If that 2nd chart is supposed to be comforting, I'm not sure why. Not only is "affordability" dropping rapidly, but the index is at levels not seen since the last housing bust in the early '90s!