Some readers are looking at what the public homebuilders are paid. "How about the outrageous pay the CEO of some of these homebuilder took home in 2005."

Beazer Homes USA - Ian J. McCarthy - $10,239,300

Horton (D.R.) - Donald J. Tomnitz - $18,182,600

KB Home - Bruce Karatz - $155,903,200

Hovnanian Enterprises - Ara K. Hovnanian - $45,915,900

Lennar - Stuart A. Miller -$28,851,100

Toll Brothers - Robert I. Toll - $40,889,800

Here's how one reader saw it. "Here is a good business model: 1) Grant lots of stock options to top management. 2) Borrow lots of money. 3) Use it for share buybacks that pump up the stock price. 4) Cash out options after price gets bid up. 5) Let company go belly up after the bubble pops Does that sound like a plan?"

Another responded, "These companies had record profits. While CEO pay maybe high at all companies, these salaries aren’t out of line with how their companies did. If there are lots of people willing to buy new houses for double their cost to be built; blame those idiots; not the home building companies."

A reply, "Private company hurray for your thinking… publicly traded… I don’t think so."

The Philadelphia Inquirer. "As the nation's housing market boomed in 2004 and 2005, managers in Toll Bros increased base prices by $3,000, $5,000 or even $10,000 every week or two. But Toll Bros. is paying for the good times. New orders for its homes fell almost 30 percent in the quarter that ended Jan. 31 as the housing market cooled. The company's stock price has plunged 40 percent since early August."

"Bob Toll said in a recent speech that profit margins were likely to decline this year. But the housing market would recover when 'we finally stop chattering about when the bubble will burst.'"
"The company will hold prices at current levels by offering buyers incentives, Toll told the group. Experts say it is important for home builders to maintain prices in their developments as the market softens so that people who bought in the last year or two do not feel as if they are losing money on their own homes in the same subdivision."

"'You don't lower the sticker price, you just start dealing so that nobody knows other than you and the dealer what you paid,' Stephen East, home-building equities analyst."

And from New York. "Seemingly without warning, a surge of housing development proposals have hit the desks of planning officials in two western Broome County towns. Developers have revealed plans to build almost 500 housing units combined in Union and Maine, with potentially more on the drawing board."

"The news is prompting questions, including: Who will occupy the houses, condominiums and rental units proposed for the towns, particularly at a time when Broome's population has declined by about 3,600 since the 2000 U.S. Census?"

"Yet the questions haven't seemed to reduce a level of demand that real estate agents claim is high. Still, a question remains: In a county where the median sale price of a single-family home is about $95,000, how many people can afford to pay two or three times that amount?"