A Field Trip Beyond Our Bubble

Did you recently stumble upon this site looking for Sacramento Centex or top ramen prices? A warm welcome to you! For those just getting started in the wonderful world of housing blogs, I thought I'd take you on a little tour of what is available outside our "little" Sacramento housing bubble. All of the links below are also located on the right side of this blog. Warning! You are about to enter the BubbleZone. If skepticism is not your thing, please go to the rear of the bus and use the emergency exit here or here.

Our first stop is The Housing Bubble blog by Ben Jones. For sheer volume of information, this is the best housing bubble blog on the web. Constantly updated with stories from across the country, this blog has a very active commenting community. Bubble Meter is a good source for news and information on the national real estate situation. The blog also does a great job keeping tabs on the ever-expanding world of housing blogs :-)

Two of my favorite regional blogs are the Marin Real Estate Bubble blog and The Boy in the Big Housing Bubble blog. The Marin blog's author, Marinite, reminds me of an Old Testament prophet crying in the wilderness, warning a willfully ignorant populace. Marinite's post on the last bubble in Southern California was one of the first things I read when I discovered the mysterious world of bubble blogs last year.

And how could you resist a blog with such a clever name! The "Boy" in the Big Housing Bubble is actually a journalist by day, and his writing shows. A great place to visit when you crave something beyond my highly honed cut & paste talents.

Other well-established and frequently updated regional blogs include: Seattle Bubble, Professor Piggington (San Diego), The Jersey Shore Real Estate Bubble, Southern California Real Estate Bubble Crash, The Massachusetts Housing Market, The Housing Bubble in Washington DC, and the Northern New Jersey Real Estate Bubble. The Northern NJ blog recently examined the collapse of the 1980's New York housing bubble.

Since launching this site, new blogs seem to be popping up all the time. Some promising ones include: Sonoma Housing Bubble, BubbleTrack, South Florida Real Estate Bubble, and Northern Virginia Bubble. You can keep tabs on this expanding universe here and here.

If you are curious about exploding inventories in other markets, then the Bubble Markets Inventory Tracking blog is a must see. Watch Phoenix inventory go from 10,000 to 37,000+ 38,000+ in just 9 months! Another important data tracking site is Housing Tracker, which keeps tabs on median asking prices and inventory numbers from across the country.

If you are looking for something a little less serious, Overvalued has some great photos of boarded-up million-dollar homes. Burbed has wonderful photos of Bay Area "steals." Flip This follows the follies of the flipper class. The blogger is especially fixated with a West Sacramento flipper who appeared in the Sacramento Bee.

Think the housing bubble is confined to the United States? The Vancouver Housing Market Blog keeps us informed about the housing bubble in Canada. Finally, no tour would be complete without a nod to The Economist's July 2005 article, In Come the Waves. If you haven't read it yet, you should.