Empty houses, falling prices: A boom dies

You can see how the housing bubble is bursting in places like Columbus, Ohio, where builders and lenders threw common sense away and enticed people to buy homes they couldn't afford.

Regular readers know that since early 2004, I have described the housing ATM as what's allowed the economy to move forward. In June, I suggested that Time magazine's cover story, "Home Sweet Home: Why We're Going Gaga Over Real Estate," might be signaling the peak.

It's looking more and more like June was the peak (witness last week's disappointing new-home sales, pre-Katrina), as various problems begin to surface around the country.To some degree, the housing market is a compendium of local markets, unlike the "centrally located" though all-encompassing stock market bubble. There is no Nasdaq or Dow Jones housing index. For that reason, as the housing bubble unwinds, it won't be quite so obvious to folks around the country unless it's happening in their community.