>Could someone please explain as layman-ly as possible
>what's going on with the housing market? Is it really
>a "bubble about to burst?"
Some markets are bubbly, other's aren't. As even the narcotically orthodox Wall Street economist Ed Hyman has to concede, the national averages are in bubble territory - but that's really being driven by the bubbly markets (e.g., SoCal, NYC, south Florida). There's no bubble in Iowa.
As for bursting...we don't have much historical precedent here for how that happens. As Greenspan likes to say in his reassuring mode, there have only been two instances since WW2 when nominal house prices have declined - and they've been short & minor. Britain had a residential bubble-bursting in the early 1990s, and it was pretty nasty. (Any Brits want to provide some details?) You're not going to see air-pocket declines, like in the stock market; the housing market is too slow for that to happen. But something's gonna happen.
Doug