By ,
Published May 05, 2017
When is a bubble a bubble?
If you're to read the front page of almost any major newspaper -- including at least two this very day -- the bubble is now, it's real estate and it's dangerous.
Not a day goes by in my business when someone doesn't talk to me about the real estate business. It’s too frothy and too much. The media is obsessed with this story. I think I know why.
The media missed the dot-com bubble. They bemoaned it after the fact, but said barely a thing during the fact. So now it's bending over backwards to warn of the day when real estate prices move backwards.
I can understand collective industry guilt. I cannot understand collectively scaring people.
I have no doubt that in some hot markets, prices are out of whack. Trust me, they'll get whacked.
But there's a very big difference to what's happening in Jupiter, Florida — where prices have soared 50 percent in the last year — and Buffalo, New York — where they've climbed about a tenth of that in the same year.
The nation isn't in a bubble. Those who scare the hell out of us are.
Anything can be taken to extremes and flipping properties like they're cards in a hot poker trade is extreme. But these are the exceptions.
Flippers eventually flop. But a wholesale crash means a wholesale retreat from fundamentals. Fundamentals like supply and demand — there's still far more demand than supply and still far more willing customers than greedy speculators.
The bullish argument is: They're not making more land. But I know full well that doesn't mean they're not making more fools.
Some like to play real estate like an Internet stock. Others buy because they're taking stock. There is a difference.
The media feels guilty it missed a bubble when there was one. Now, I fear it's creating another, when there isn't one.
Watch Neil Cavuto weekdays at 4 p.m. ET on "Your World with Cavuto" and send your comments to cavuto@foxnews.com
https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/sorry-to-burst-your-bubble