Wikipedia:Peer review/United States housing bubble/archive1

United States housing bubble
Several positive comments have been made about the article "US housing bubble," both at its talk page and over the web (blogs, Google), and the discussion came about about nominating it as a featured article. Saxifrage suggested that it be peer reviewed as part of this process, so I've requested this here. Your comments and feedback would be greatly appreciated. Frothy 11:33, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Oh dear. Nice work, but serious POV problems. Almost everything from the title down takes it for a fact that there is a bubble. There may be but even the article notes it's not possible to be sure until it's over. California and some other markets have existed for quite some time in a state where median home prices were well out of reach of median income. That doesn't mean CA is not a bubble, but it also doesn't mean that that situation in the rest of the country means there unequivocably is a bubble. It is possible that the US as a whole is not in housing bubble, and a number of economists do not paint it as one. I'm not saying it isn't a bubble, just that unequivocably claiming it is one is POV. Also the section 'Widespread belief that home prices never fall' with it's graph is misleading. The text talks about home prices not falling whereas the graph refers to median sales prices. The graph doesn't track the sales prices of specific houses and show they are falling, instead it looks at what sales have happened and what price they sold for. That graph is typically explained by a larger number of lower price houses selling and less higher price housses selling, and could occur even if not a single individual home price actually falls. Further, a bubble for a couple individual markets, even if confirmed, does not imply the entire country is in a bubble, which the article title does. So the article, including the title needs balance to take into account the possiblity it's not a bubble, and to objectively look at the US housing market. A lot of the same statistics and work could be there, just balance it with the other half of the coin. - Taxman Talk 12:15, 14 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Taxman, thank you for your comments. I honestly don't believe that it's the case that the article takes the bubble as a fact—I would say that everything from the title down takes it for a fact that there may or may not be a bubble, and presents facts and opinions that support both sides. The simple fact is that there appears to be much more evidence for the existence of a bubble, especially now that the market is cooling severely in many parts of the country (record inventory, falling prices, increased foreclosures, and the like), so there is a lot more facts and evidence to present on the pro- side than the anti- side, but that doesn't mean that the aticle is POV, any more than the article on evolution is POV because it doesn't treat creationism equally. None of this is to say that more anti- statistics could be added, I'm just not sure what statistics those would be. Also, when one speaks of falling home prices, one can mean many things: falling asking prices, falling price of mean and/or median sales price, etc. The graph simply presents one of these. For specific home, one can easily consult zillow.com to find examples of homes purchased in the past few years that have resold for less now, but for an encyclopedic article, average values are much more important than specific ones. Finally, the article makes it abundantly clear that bubbles may exist in many parts of the U.S., but not necessarily the entire U.S. (see the Fortune magazine "Dead Zone/Danger Zone/Safe Haven" citation). Frothy 20:53, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm somewhat swayed by the greater evidence supports the greater coverage of the pro bubble view, though I haven't reviewed all the evidence myself enough to say. But the median sale price graph is still too misleading to be acceptable. The average person when they think of falling prices will never think of the median sale price across the whole market. Most people don't even know what median means or what it implies. Again, that graph could be explained just by what houses are selling, not by any sale price decline of any kind. That makes it misleading. - Taxman Talk 23:07, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Okay, but your comment about the plot of inflation adjusted year-over-year prices leaves me scratching my head. That's the metric everyone (RE industry and media, e.g., see this note from the Weekly Standard) uses to gauge the market—what else would you suggest? It was placed there to counter the common assertion that real estate doesn't fall—here's a clear, recent U.S. example where it has fallen. Also, this metric is also consistent with the plot based on the Economist’s data. What else can we use but year-over-year medians, which are much less susceptible to outliers than the mean? And this is an encyclopedia—if someone doesn't know what median means, we can easily add a link. Frothy 02:32, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I added links to Wiki's "median" page for people who don't know what this means. Frothy 11:35, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
 * The House Price Index is based on tracking the price of the same properties over time. Using that index should avoid this sort of criticism. It's only been around for a decade though. The choice of means or medians is a separate issue; I don't think anyone's suggesting using raw means. -- Avenue 13:42, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
 * The House Price Index and median home prices will not yield substantively different conclusions. Of course, everyone is free to add the HPI if they have a plot of it for the country or specific regions. However, it should also be made clear that it is not adjusted for inflation. Frothy 16:42, 15 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Among the other complaints, I would add that the article should be moved to one that is specific to the housing bubble in question. The current article title would lead me to believe that it's about US housing bubbles in general, which the content does not support.  Jun-Dai 23:12, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that's a good comment, and I've been thinking about that myself. Everyone in the U.S. just calls it the "housing bubble." There have been local bubbles in the past, but never one this large, so there is an argument to be made to call this what it is now, the "US housing bubble." Any suggestions for an alternative? Frothy 02:32, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I've made the first sentence much more definitive, while acknowledging that the "bubble" refers to either an actual or hypothesized condition, and made it clear that certain (populous) parts of the US are specifically affected. Frothy 14:12, 17 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Some overall softening could be done here and there regarding NPOV, for sure, but overall I think this is some great work. The main problem, though, might be unsolvable: how easy is it to _encyclopedically_ document a current phenomenom that isn't possible to fully identify until it's in the past? As much as I agree with the content of the article, it seems likely that some people won't agree with it, and there's no way to comprehensively prove or disprove either point of view. This is unfortunate because your research is very well implemented here. Thoughts? SlapAyoda 12:51, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks—The WP:NPOV approach that I attempted for my contributions to this article are: (1) no one can predict the future, especially in economics, and every fact must be evaluated with this reality in mind; (2) the US housing bubble is a "fact" in that discussion about it is a current reality popularly and in the news media (3.3 million Google hits), and that there are many valid reasons for concern over the possibility of this phenomenon. Everyone is free to edit Wikipedia, so if there are other facts/arguments I missed, either pro- or anti-, I would strongly encourage people to add these in a cited, factual, and WP:NPOV way. Also, this is not strictly reserach (WP:NOR), but simply an encyclopedic article about the concern of the possibility of the bubble in the US housing market. Frothy 15:04, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I added text and a citation to this Business Week article on a discussion between several economists last summer. A lot has changed since then, so it's out of date, but it shows the history of debate. Frothy 18:09, 17 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Please see automated peer review suggestions here. Thanks, AZ t 23:43, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
 * That is cool. And helpful. Do you have one that writes the articles? Frothy 00:39, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Done (mostly). Thanks for creating this—I think that some of the "annotated notes" trigger the algorithm, but it really improved things. Frothy 20:12, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to thank everyone for their excellent feedback. I believe that I've addressed the great majority of the comments. As activity here has died down, I'm going to proceed to put this up as a candidate for "featured." Frothy 18:17, 21 August 2006 (UTC)