Shiller: Mercado de vivienda se está calentando, pero por ahora no hay burbuja

Genevieve Signoret & Patrick Signoret

Robert Shiller, escribiendo en NYT el 28 de septiembre, discutió la evidencia sobre si está volviendo a surgir o no una “mentalidad burbuja” (bubble mentality) en el sector vivienda –la creencia generalizada y ajena a los fundamentos de que los precios siempre van a subir. Concluyó que no existe burbuja, pero que hay señales de que puede surgir una en el futuro. (Consulten las gráficas de precios de vivienda más recientes en nuestro blog.)

Shiller:

Is it possible that we are lapsing into what I call a bubble mentality — a self-reinforcing cycle of popular belief that prices can only go higher?

Some answers arise from a study that Professor Case and I have been conducting since 2003.

[…] In this year’s survey, the answers didn’t suggest a bubble mentality, though the theme of temporarily low interest rates remained. In summary, Americans are still relatively sober about housing. They aren’t showing “irrational exuberance” about home investing to the degree they did in the past, at least not yet.

But neither are they being completely realistic. In reading the most recent answers, I see no signs that home buyers have learned the lesson I tried to convey in the second edition of my book “Irrational Exuberance” in 2005. That message was that existing-home prices have shown virtually no tendency to trend upward in real, inflation-corrected terms over the last century. While land is limited, it’s only a small component of home value in most places. New construction often brings down the value of older homes, which wear out and go out of fashion, dragging down prices.

[…] People have certainly been right that there will always be steps up and down. Unfortunately, there is no certainty that the ups will outnumber the downs.

People who are now inclined to buy a home are most often just thinking that we are gradually recovering from a recession and that this is a good time to buy. The mental framing still seems to be about economic recovery and the likelihood that interest rates will rise. People mostly don’t seem to be prompted by the anticipation of another housing boom.

That’s the thinking at the moment. But whether these attitudes mutate into a national epidemic of bubble thinking — one big enough to outweigh higher mortgage rates, fiscal austerity in Congress and other factors — remains to be seen.

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