Housing Giant Says Some Suprising Things

The New York Times has a long article on Toll Brothers:

Bob Toll conceded to me that Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, had a good point: some housing markets were frothy and infested with speculators. Toll agreed that the mortgage industry needed to tighten up its lending practices and stop pushing interest-only loans to high-risk clients. In midsummer, he predicted that some metropolitan areas - "New York and Washington and Phoenix and San Fran and L.A. and Las Vegas and Naples and Boca" - were about to slow down painfully. "Investors will get creamed, and they'll get out of the deals," he said, noting that a subsequent recovery would take anywhere from 3 to 10 months. But beyond that - a catastrophic crash? "Why can't real estate just have a boom like every other industry?" Toll asked in complaint. "Why do we have to have a bubble and then a pop?"

You might want to read the whole thing.