What's changed, he argues, is the job picture. In 2002, the region had emerged from a recession the year before. People who lost their jobs had to sell their homes. That's what dragged down housing in the early 1990s, and it easily could have done so again.
"It was a recipe for disaster," Burns said. "We got through the job losses somehow, and now we're generating more demand for houses than we're building."
In 2002, Dean Baker was a more emphatic housing bear than Burns. But he hasn't changed his mind.
"We're going to have a decline in house prices in six months," said Baker, director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington think tank. "I've been saying that for three years now."
A year ago, Baker was so sure the collapse was at hand that he sold his Washington condo, which had tripled in value in the seven years he owned it. He moved two blocks away into a rental and wrote another article warning that "the crash of the housing market will not be pretty."
He pointed out that housing prices traditionally didn't rise faster than inflation, but that on the coasts the price jumps were exceeding that level by double digits. He dismissed the argument that prices were increasing because of immigration, or the scarcity of land or the demographics of the baby boomers.
Despite this excellent list of reasons, the crash stubbornly refused to happen.
"It's kind of troubling, like you were a physicist studying the laws of motion and you see an object that ignores gravity," Baker acknowledged.
Asked for his latest prediction of a bubble bursting, he said: "I'll stick with six months."
Some people, however, don't think a crash will ever come. They include many California homeowners.
Yale University professor Robert J. Shiller, a housing bear who expects prices to fall so much he sees a risk of national or even world recession, has been surveying recent home buyers in the Southland.
In 2003, new owners surveyed said they thought the value of their homes would increase an average of 13% a year for a decade.
By last year, they expected 22.5%.
"They said their $650,000 home was going to be worth $1.7 million," said Shiller. "About a third of the population has really high expectations. They see the price increases and extrapolate from them."
Shiller's unscientific survey -- he sent out 500 letters and followed up with a postcard if there was no reply -- was backed up by the recent Gallup/Experian poll, which surveyed the whole country.
