While the paper is falling all over itself to predict that the real estate market is done cooling off, Slate has a fairly entertaining characterization of the current housing market as the year 2000 Internet “this is not a bubble!” bubble.

Echoes from 2000 can also be heard in the continual false calls of a market bottom. The Web site Minyanville has documented the repeated bottom-calling attempts by National Association of Realtors economist David Lereah. Lereah believed the housing market had stabilized in March 2006 and again in April, June, October, and November.

Good, smug fun!

David Lereah, who published a book in 2005 telling readers how they could get rich participating in the endless housing boom, published a book in 2000 advising readers how they could get rich from the endless information technology boom.

Ha ha, buussted! But this is not exactly the same as the Internet bust, because in housing there are legions of people quietly pining for a crash. Generation X, we used be called. Those of us not born into prime real estate have been unable to buy any, particularly in the cities we’ve been flocking to.

Even before the housing bubble stories started trickling in we were anticipating them. You don’t need to be told that three quarters of a mil is just too damn expensive (in today’s money) for your first house. So it’s been fun to watch the old, real-estate-owning dudes at the Times wring their hands over lightly declining prices the past two years. Now we get to watch them falsely predict bottom after bottom leading up to the crash we’re dreaming of.

I don’t know about you, but I’m totally gonna wear flannel and listen to Nirvana as this shit goes down.