A lot of people have been quoting this passage from Chip Case’s op-ed on housing as an investment:

For people with a more realistic version of the American dream, buying a house now can make a lot of sense. Think of it as an investment. The return or yield on that investment comes in two forms. First, it provides what is called “net imputed rent from owner-occupied housing.” You live in the house and so it provides you with a real flow of valuable services. This part of the yield is counted as part of national income by the Commerce Department. It is the equivalent of about a 6 percent return on your investment after maintenance and repair, and it is constant over time in real terms. Consider it this way: when Enron went belly up, shareholders ended up with nothing, but when the housing market drops, homeowners still have a house. And this benefit is tax-free.

I really did not want to revisit this question since I have already covered it here many times before. Folks, however, are talking about it again given its coverage at the Fed's Jackson Hole conference. Mark Thoma, for example, has posted several pieces on it in the past few days. Most of this renewed discussion has taken a less critical view of the Fed's role during the housing boom, specifically the role played by the Fed's low interest rate policy. I feel compelled to rebut this Fed love fest since there are compelling reasons to believe the Fed did play an important role in creating the housing boom. To be clear, I do not see the Fed as the only contributor--far from it--but it does appear to be one of the more important ones. Here is my list of reasons why:

(1) The Fed kept its policy interest rate, the federal funds rate, below the natural or neutral interest rate for an extended period. It is not correct to say the Fed kept interest rates very low and thus monetary policy was very loose. Interest rates can be low because the economy is weak, not just because monetary policy is stimulative. Interest rates only indicate a loosening of monetary policy if they are low relative to the neutral interest rate, the interest rate level consistent with a closed output gap ( i.e. the economy operating at its full potential). There is ample evidence that the Fed during the 2002-2004 period pushed the federal funds rate well below the neutral interest rate level. For example, see Laubach and Williams (pdf) (2003) or this ECB study (2007). Below is graph that shows the Laubach and Williams natural interest rate minus the real federal funds rate. This spread provides a measure on the stance of monetary policy--the larger it is the looser is monetary policy and vice versa. This figure shows that monetary policy was unusually accommodative during the 2002-2004 period. This figure also indicates an important development behind the large gap was that the productivity boom at that time kept the neutral interested elevated even as the Fed held down the real federal funds rate.

Today, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) released their Pending Home Sales Report for July showing a slight increase with the seasonally adjusted national index climbing 5.2% since June but remaining a whopping 19.1% below the level seen in July 2009.

On a non-seasonally adjusted basis the national index as well as all regional measures declined significantly with the national index falling 7.2% since June and 20.1% since July 2009.

Adam Levitin and Susan Wachter have a new paper out which reckons it can explain the entire housing bubble by looking at the supply of private-label mortgage-backed securities in the market, and the information asymmetries embedded in them.
They do have a point: since the banks putting together these private-lable securities, or PLS, knew much better than the buyers (and, for that matter, the ratings agencies) what was going into them, there was an opportunity — grasped with both fists — to take advantage of those asymmetries:

Today, the U.S. Census Bureau released their July read of construction spending showing near-trough level spending for residential construction with a continued slowing trend while indicating a slight monthly increase in non-residential spending.

With this months release it's plain to see that residential construction spending is trending similarly to other measures of performance for the residential housing markets reverting back down to the the worst levels seen in early 2009.