In the neighborhood where I just bought a house, there are four more houses under construction, three of them without people ready to move in. There is also a home that was completed before my home was, but still hasn’t been sold, after nearly four months.

All of this speaks to an interesting question: is overbuilding partly to blame for the current housing downcycle? Inman News reports that some people think that overbuilding has contributed to the problem:

Mark Dotzour, an economist at Texas A&M
University, said he believes there are parallels between the 1980s,
when commercial builders "just kept building product when there wasn’t
any demand for it," and residential overbuilding in the latest market
cycle.

With supply exceeding demand, that can cause problems, as home prices come down. Additionally, a large supply of homes probably helped lead to the fact that lending standards loosened, and those who normally shouldn’t buy homes were able to.

While the housing downcycle can’t be blamed on any one factor, overbuilding probably helped contribute to the problem. And if my neighborhood is any indication, it is still a factor.