[pigbucket]

I distrust articles from "the Fool" because they often do stuff like this; publish one article calling for a recovery in X, and one saying that X will tank. Ultimately, someone at fool.com will always have been right. That doesn't mean this article is wrong, but my guess is that it is just the article written in response to someone at the Fool saying, Hey, we need to write a pessimistic piece on real estate to counterbalance our recent upbeat assessment. What actually makes the article not credible, in my view, is that it takes no account of growing population, no account of economic growth, no account of future inflation, no account of the precipitous decline in housing starts in the last few years, and no account of the fact that people are inclined to forget the lessons of the latest bubble as soon as they smell a new one. It also takes no account of the fact that every time someone says "this time is different" they turn out to be wrong, but maybe this time is different.

(I own (so to speak) a house--how's that for disclosure!)

[Troll_Whisperer]

I trust the Motley Fool more because of that. Their columnists are free to argue with each other, and to be honest I've loved their 4-part "dueling fuels" series. Excluding the content just for newbies, I've found it some of the most educational reading on any finance site.