Blogger Felix Salmon compares the British fetish for buying and flipping apartments for a fast profit with NYC, where such behavior hasn't yet caught on to the same degree. (To establish his credentials, he spells "behavior" that other way.) He writes:
This sort of behaviour is quite common in the UK; it's barely even beginning here in the US. Very few Americans buy property in order to become rich; most still do it for the old-fashioned reason of needing somewhere to live. The frenzy of apartment-buyers in Manhattan is not a slathering horde of speculators falling over themselves to get a piece of the property-market action: rather, it's a bunch of stressed-out professionals desperately trying to find somewhere they can afford to buy.Stressed out professionals? We have no idea what he's talking about.
· Housing Bubbles [Felix Salmon]