A real estate investor who made a fortune shorting subprime mortgages more than a decade ago told CNBC on Friday he believes the current housing market is in a bubble.
“Absolutely. I think we’re in an omni-bubble. How long does it last? It depends. How long do you keep the faucet open and this money running?” billionaire Jeff Greene said on “Power Lunch.”
“There’s just so much money in corporate balance sheets … and people’s balance sheets and their bank accounts that it’s just driven prices of everything higher, but at some point, this has to stop,” Greene said.
The housing market has been one of the strongest parts of the U.S. economy during the coronavirus pandemic, which also put millions of people out of work and sparked a recession.
Mortgage rates have been historically low, and the rise of remote work has given Americans greater flexibility in where they live. Home prices have been soaring as strong demand clashed with low supply.
Greene is not the first person to suggest the market is overheating, although his previous bet against the housing market in the mid-2000s makes his comments Friday notable. Recently, Google searches for “When is the housing market going to crash?” have spiked dramatically.
“When you see prices go up the way they’ve gone up, you have to ask yourself: Why did this happen?” Greene said, contending the robust monetary and fiscal policy response to the pandemic played a key role.
“My view is it happened 80% because of the extraordinary amount of…
