Misplaced Pages

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United States housing bubble

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This article is independently getting very high praise and pointers from professionals in the blogosphere. E.g., here is Jonathan Miller at Matrix, "Housing Bubble Goes All Misplaced Pages On Us,"

Misplaced Pages adds an incredibly thorough entry on the whole housing bubble phenomenon called United States housing bubble. Hat tip to Calculated Risk. It lays out much of the events associated with the end of the recent housing boom. Its long, but its a good read. Here are some of the topics: Controversy Mania for home ownership Widespread belief that housing is a risk-free, growth investment Popularity of home purchasing in the media Speculative purchases of homes Crash of the dot-com bubble Historically low interest rates Differential relationship between interest rates and affordability Interest-only and adjustable rate mortgages Predictions and status of a market correction Its makes a pretty strong argument for Misplaced Pages as a resource.

. I think this independent blog entry by a professional real estate analyst pretty much says it all. Since these comments have been made, this ongoing story has evolved with the correction of the U.S. housing bubble, including the subprime mortgage collapse and the reaction of the U.S. Senate, and the spread of the subprime problems into near prime mortgages. No one knows how long or how far housing will fall, but history shows that no one should be surprised if this story continues for a decade or more. Waiting a decade for the last part of this history to be written is not in keeping with the "wiki" in Misplaced Pages, so I'd like to propose that this article appear as a featured article now. It's received much independent praise, it satisfies Wiki's FA criteria, and it's a very timely article on a hugely important subject. Frothy 19:03, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

A sidenote - I'd like to add, regarding this article's first FAC nom, in all the years I've been FA director, that FAC nom was probably the one I hated to fail the most. Raul654 19:07, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

• Comment. Raul654, thanks for that comment. Here's what the blog Paper Money had to say about this article during the first nomination in the post "Wiki Wiki Housing Bubble":

For those of you out there who have yet to read (or haven’t read lately) the Misplaced Pages page dedicated to the United States Housing Bubble, I would strongly recommend that you do so. To say that the page is thorough would be an understatement. It has been meticulously edited and formatted with many of the most compelling and pertinent data including housing cost and P/E analysis, charts, and discussion on the media and overall cultural factors that influenced the housing mania along with an abundance of exacting footnotes. It is truly a living document dedicated to what may, in the end, be one of the most compelling stories of our time. Thanks Frothy (and to the others) who have done such a superb job authoring this great Wiki page over the last nine months.

As noted above, this article now contains several huge new developments in this subject since that time. Frothy 19:20, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - Image:Time Magazine June 13 2005 Cover.jpg , Image:Lereah BookCover 2005.jpg , and Image:LereahNotBust.jpg need fair use rationales. -Bluedog423 20:26, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

 Done on Time magazine cover because fair use covers illustration of "the publication of the issue of the magazine in question"—the appearance of this cover is cited as the peak of the bubble. Also,

 Done on Lereah Book Cover #1 because fair use covers "an article discussing the book in question", which the United States housing bubble does explicitly.

 Done on Lereah Book Cover #2 because fair use covers "an article discussing the book in question", which the United States housing bubble does explicitly.

Frothy 21:27, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Frothy, if I understand Bluedog423's comment correctly, the request is for fairuse rationales to be added to the images themselves. See This Is The Sea image for an example; it is used in This Is the Sea, and there is a statement of fair use at the image page itself. Mike Christie (talk) 21:51, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

• Support This article is very important as it identifies major economic factors in the lives of millions of our readers using top quality sources and explanations. As a example of wikipedia article making it is top notch. Frothy has done a wonderful job and many others have helped. WAS 4.250 21:23, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose Despite excellent relevance and references, the first and most important criteria for featured article status is good writing. This article goes off on tangents regarding the collapse of subprime and alt-A without really describing what these are let alone why these matter. Some of this content needs to be split off into other pages or presented differently. The section that refers to rising interest rates seems genuinely misleading to me as it hypes the "blood bath" angle without bringing up the fact that interest rates are historically low, which oddly enough would support the bubble hypothesis. The remarks about proposed bail outs are extremely serious, but appear to be addressed here with a total lack of seriousness and even levity. Specifically, what Rep. Schumer and others have proposed is important, but described here in an intentionally misleading way. Do you want to have a featured article or a political campaign? You have to choose one or the other because you cannot have both! -- M0llusk 22:20, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

• Not sure what to make of your comments. Senator Schumer's proposal is discussed in the following context:

  "Moreover, Democratic senators such as Senator Charles Schumer of New York are already proposing a federal government bailout of subprime borrowers in order to save homeowners from losing their residences. Opponents of such proposal assert that government bailout of subprime borrowers is not in the best interests of the U.S. economy because it will simply set a bad precedent, create a moral hazard, and worsen the speculation problem in the housing market. "

  How could anyone think that does this lacks seriousness or contains levity?! How can you say that these statements constitute a political campaign?
• And there's an entire section on low interest rates called "Historically low interest rates" explaining their relevance to the bubble. The fact that interest rates are rising is logically relevant to the section in which this subsection appears, "Status of housing market correction", whether or not rates are historically low.
• Therefore, contrary to what you have said, the examples you cite show the article is well written. Frothy 23:19, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose All of this time at FAC and between FACs, and the first issues raised still haven't been addressed. Please see WP:MSH regarding section headings (shortening them, avoiding repeition, and correct capitalization). The article has almost as much content in footnotes as in the article, and extensively relies on quotes. The article still has stubby sections: "Crash of the dot-com bubble" is two sentences. If it warrants a section, the content should be expanded. Please see WP:LAYOUT wrt See also—relevant links should be incorporated into the text to the extent possible. A red link in See also ??? If we remove the lengthy footnotes, quotes, and See also, how much content is left? The concerns from the first FAC remain. The lengthy footnotes give the impression that the text isn't well written, and that much of that content should be included in the article. Footnotes are still not correctly formatted (please see WP:CITE/ES for examples). External links is a link farm and should be pruned per WP:EL, WP:RS and WP:NOT. Would you mind not cluttering FAC with those boxes—FACs aren't promoted based on flashy marketing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:09, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

• That's not a fair account. We addressed all of these: the annotated footnotes were, by consensus, felt to be essential in a subjective controversial article such as this; and the links to relevant blogs quoted by major news organizations are also essential—not the "link farm" you call them. I could go on, but instead I invite anyone to review the record to see that these subjects have been discussed at length and resolved by consensus, a consensus with which you obviously disagree. Others continue to go out of their way to praise this article. From designing better futures:

wikipedia article on the house price bubble. It is surprisignly thorough and filled with data.

From Mr. Moderate:

Misplaced Pages has an excellent article on the housing bubble in the United States. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Frothy 00:05, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

• Comment. Fair use of the magazine covers seems a bit questionable to me. In Misplaced Pages:Non-free_content#Examples_of_unacceptable_use, #7 says that using a cover merely because it depicts the subject is not acceptable. Since a cover is usually connected with an article, using a cover merely because the issue contains a relevant article doesn't seem much different. As I understand it, fair use of a magazine cover only works if the cover itself is notable, such as the 2006 Time Person of the Year cover, or the cover art itself is discussed critically. Gimmetrow 03:23, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

• Please read the fair use rationale: "the appearance of this cover is cited as the peak of the bubble." The cover is not used incidentally; it manifestly conforms fair use policy as it is used in the article because it's appearance shows a mania for home ownership in the U.S., as explained explicitly in that section. Frothy 09:41, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose - very confusing to read for the layperson. This is a good start, but the topic needs to be laid out in a clearer way. The lead section, and the article, uses the term "bubble" a lot, without ever really explaining what a bubble is. There are links to various other articles, but most readers will have to go and read those articles first to have a chance of understanding this one. Misplaced Pages articles should link to other articles, but they should also be self-contained to a large degree. It is very annoying to have to break off and go and read another article before coming back to this one. One final point, the article doesn't seem to have a proper ending or conclusion. It seems to end in mid-air, with the rest of the story left untold. Either pick a cut-off date and stick to it, moving the recent "news" stuff to a new article, or wait until the story is finished before writing the article. Carcharoth 13:26, 29 June 2007 (UTC)