The Washington Post has this viewpoint of the housing bubble. "The real estate market has become an obsession for a lot of people in this region, and James Cave is one of them. He has spent the past eight years saving for a down payment. Cave navigates smoothly through the congested streets of Arlington on a recent workday afternoon. Shaking his head and waving his arms in frustration, he points out what he sees as the rising signs of insanity all around him."

"He gestures to one newly built condominium tower where he had considered buying. '$350,000 to $1 million,' he snorts. 'Next to a gas station and a fast-food restaurant. Smell it! Smell it! You can smell the fast food cooking!' Cave points to another rising edifice. 'You can see the signs; luxury condos for $800,000. What could be so luxurious in a condo?'"

"He spends at least part of every day thinking about real estate. He worries most about what would happen to him if values were to fall after he finally bought, possibly draining years of his savings."

"When Cave does the numbers, he finds it hard to justify the expense. A couple of years ago, he noted, one-bedroom condos were selling for $175,000, and now they are listed at twice the price. Take the Arlington condo he rents for $1,400 a month. Units similar to his have sold for $480,000. Recently the investor who is his landlord offered to sell him the place for $440,000. Cave turned down the offer. He figured out it would cost him more than $3,000 a month to own the place, assuming a 20 percent down payment, taxes, insurance and the condo fee."

"He can't see spending twice as much to own as he does renting. That would leave him constantly strapped for cash and stripped of his savings, he said. 'It seems like the moorings are coming undone from reality,' he said. 'It's like the Internet stock craze, you'd sit there and say something doesn't compute here. What's happened in the last three years? My salary hasn't gone up anything like that.'"

"He quickly notes that there are now 47 new complexes being advertised for sale, which strikes him as a lot. He had been noticing that prices seemed to be dropping, and now he notices that the listed prices are no longer available. 'It's like they're hiding the prices now,' he said. 'They've all taken the prices off the list.'"

"The MLS lists 462 condos available for sale in Arlington, he said. There are several hundred more units available in new buildings and new condo conversions that aren't listed on that service. In February 2005, 94 condos and coops were for sale in Arlington; in February 2006, that number had increased more than four-fold to 444 units."

"'There are probably the same number of buyers as before, but they are not in any rush to buy,' said Rick Bosl, a real estate agent who specializes in the Arlington condo market. And there are just so many more homes for sale, he said. 'In some markets, we've seen prices go down, and nobody wants to buy in a falling market,' he said."