All across the US, people are editorializing on the housing bubble. "I'm buying a home in Buckeye. I see an awful lot written about the real estate 'bubble' bursting, but I've yet to see evidence of this happening in Phoenix. In the overall Phoenix market, inventory is up more than 10 times year-ago levels; prices are up 70 percent over 2004 levels; yet sales dipped only 7 percent in the first quarter of 2006. Is this evidence of a bubble bursting? I think not."

"The media's bubble talk could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's easy to write about the doomsday scenario because it makes for dramatic reading, but the problems start to arise when it has no basis in fact and readers actually start to believe it, much like the overhyped Y2K bug."

The LA Times. "Month after month, as interest rates rise and building starts stumble, we hear that the sky is falling. Alan Greenspan and his successor, Ben Bernanke, in separate speeches, announced the end of the housing boom. They are certainly correct that the market is slowing. But the sky still isn't falling."

"Unless you're a real estate agent, mortgage broker, builder or go-go speculator, and nowadays, we realize, that includes a distressingly large number of people, this housing slump isn't going to bonk you on the head like a falling acorn."

Another said, "Thanks to the real estate bubble, Monterey could become 'Salinas-adjacent.' Earlier this month, the New York Times gave Salinas, if not a raison d'etre, at least a dubious claim to fame: It's the least affordable place to live."

"I know the bubble's about to burst when my fellow twentysomethings, recent college grads who just a generation ago took on roommates to make rent, start obsessing about interest rates and property values."

"The problem is, people who can't afford overpriced homes are gobbling them up thanks to interest-only and sub-prime loans. Los Angeles County residents spend, on average, 40% to 50% of their monthly household incomes on mortgages. And with the newly acquired home comes collateral for more loans; in other words, an inflated sense of self-worth. On paper, of course."

"Thinking of a house as a home instead of a get-rich-quick opportunity shouldn't be such a quaint idea. Nor should buying what you can actually afford."

And from Florida. "The top executive of the Orlando area's Realtor association is warning members that they may be in for a shock and some pain if the residential real estate market continues to soften. 'For some of you, it will be a scary thing,' Belton Jennings said to several hundred members during an association luncheon this week."

"Jennings noted that about 86 percent of the more than 11,000 local Realtor members have been in the business less than 10 years, and existing-home sales in the Orlando area have set annual records for the past 13 years. During the past year alone, the local association's membership swelled 26 percent to 11,897 people. So any softness in the market will be magnified."

"As the inventory rises to record levels, mortgage rates edge up and pay raises trail home prices, everyone 'is becoming edgier,' Jennings said, buyers, sellers and agents. If it continues, he said, some real estate offices will close."

"'Marginal agents will retire faster,' he predicted, and consolidation within the industry will continue. 'The big get bigger,' he said, and midsize offices will be squeezed out."

"'There is no [housing] bubble in Orlando,' he said. 'We still have demand for housing, and jobs are being created.'"