[airhadoken]

Suburbia these days draws a strong parallel to the NHL in the '90s. The major expansion binge which created hockey teams where they, to be frank, had no business being, watered down the product by spreading talent thinly and damn near killed the sport in the US (it will probably never die in Canada no matter what happens).

In the same vein, most of the country never had a housing crunch like the Bay Area and metro Boston, but home building has been consistently outstripping the economy. Population grows at 0.9% annually, or about 2.7 million people per year; From 2000-2006, the net increase in housing units was 9.0% over the whole span, or 1.4% per year. In 2006 alone there were 1.8 million family units created, and over 2 million in 2005. With 2.3 or 2.4 people per household on average, there should only be 1.2 million new homes per year.

Unless household size is rapidly shrinking, there just aren't enough families to fill the houses being produced.