Take a Virtual Ride On the Roller Coaster Known as the Florida Housing Market

Housing starts are down. The pending home sale index is down. The stock market recently saw its biggest single-day drop in a century - due in no small part to rising bad credit mortgage turmoil.

Forecasters projecting gloom and doom… or just a return to normalcy. Some say we have hit bottom, while others say the market will be depressed through at least 2008, despite continued low Florida mortgage rates.

One thing is indisputable: The Florida housing market has been a roller coaster ride, and the direction that ride takes next is still uncertain.

With that in mind, speculativebubble.com has taken this concept to a new level, depicting the housing market as an actual amusement park ride - its steady climbs and sharp declines (adjusted for inflation) depicted as if one were riding an actual roller coaster.

Check out the video below…

[googlevideo]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2757699799528285056[/googlevideo]

It’s a long, bumpy ride (almost four minutes beginning in 1890 and leading up to the present). If you can make it until the end, when the roller coaster hits the late ’90s and home prices soar into the clouds, you’ll see just how meteoric the recent Florida housing market boom was.

Powered by home loan rates at historic lows, speculators in the Sunshine State and other hot markets purchased more homes than any point in history.

What’s to come in the next few years? Will the tightening of standards by Florida mortgage companies result in another precipitous decline? Or will the current glut of inventory simply mean a period of little movement? Stay tuned.