There's a small group of people in the United States who follow house prices. According to an obscure discipline known as "economics," an excess supply of an item usually leads to a reduction in price. A little known government agency, the "Commerce Department," reported last week that the vacany rate for ownership units hit yet another record high in the first quarter.
The vacancy rate for ownership units inched up from 2.7 percent in the fourth quarter to 2.8 percent in the first quarter. It had never hit even 2.0 percent until the fourth quarter of 2005. The vacancy rate for rental housing also rose to 10.1 percent, just 0.3 percentage points below the all-time high in the first quarter of 2004.
As best I can tell this release got no coverage at all in the media, probably because the public has so little interest in housing prices.
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