Watching The House Price Bubble Burst

According to The Economist, "the global housing boom is the biggest financial bubble in history.... In many countries around the globe, house prices are already at record levels in relation to rents and incomes." Many people contend that houses are fundamentally different from stocks and hence are less vulnerable to a rapid meltdown, but there are troubling similarities between the house-price boom and the dotcom bubble. "The recent surge in house prices has gone hand-in-hand with a much larger jump in household debt [and] as a result of such borrowing, housing booms tend to be more dangerous than stockmarket bubbles, and are often followed by periods of prolonged economic weakness."