Interview with Bill Nygren, fund manager, including “favorite mistakes.”
And more on the housing bubble and Freddie Mac, going over six reasons why there isn’t a bubble– more agile manufacturing, longer hold times and higher transaction fees, etc. etc. But the fact is, people are speculating in real estate directly or indirectly (through REITs), and as agile as centralized homebuilders are, it still takes a long time for permitting and building. There’s an office/lab building on Third and Binney that I think is still unused two years after construction: finished building it just as the office rental market went from 1% vacancy to 10%. They’re still building, two years on: more office, more retail, more biotech, and yes, more housing (some 200 condos, I think). In Boston, supply really is behind demand, and over-regulation means construction is too slow to even come close to catching up, but even if construction is more agile than it was, it’s still not close to actually being able to respond to demand changes in less than six to twelve months.
Secretly Ironic 