Market Watch - "Greed, speculation helped overheat housing market: Toll CEO" (9-12-06)

"Toll Brothers Inc. Chief Executive Robert Toll said the U.S. housing market got ahead of itself due to greed on the part of buyers and sellers, and that it now likely faces the highest level of speculative inventory ever. Toll said the current downturn is unique in his experience because it wasn't driven by a "macro-event" although interest rates have risen steadily. "Every day there's an article about how lousy housing is now and how dumb you have to be to buy a house now," the CEO said Tuesday at the Credit Suisse Homebuilders Symposium. "I don't know what it will take to turn this market -- it could take two years, or it could take someone getting quoted in the New York Times saying the market has hit bottom."