It seems that a condition of being a source on the housing market for NPR is having missed the housing bubble. Morning Edition ran a piece on President Obama's new housing plan in which Mark Zandi claimed that a main benefit was that it could stop the decline in house prices. Since there continues to be enormous oversupply in the housing market, as shown by a record vacancy rate and falling rents, it is extremely unlikely that house prices will stabilize until they return to at least their pre-bubble levels. It is also not clear why anyone would want to make homes more expensive for future buyers as a matter of policy.
--Dean Baker
