A weekend topic starting with Housing Wire. "Noel Christopher, senior vice president at Renters Warehouse, warned people not to buy into the hype over the imminent real estate crash. And while 'don’t buy into the hype' is good advice in general, it brings with it a bad side effect. It gives hype a bad name. Hype is not bad. Buying into it without a valid reason is bad."

"In truth, hype is the only reason anyone ever found out about the ideas that ultimately become wildly successful. It’s not intended to be a hot stock tip. It’s an invitation to peer into the idea and determine for ourselves whether it’s worth our time and investment. We don’t want to just blindly buy into it, but we may want to look into it. Ask anyone who didn’t look into Amazon in 1997. The hype was out there, they just didn’t buy into it."

From USA Today. "In June, Natalee King and her husband, Jonathan, realized a decade-long dream of buying a home in Orange County, California, one of the more expensive housing markets in the country. The couple drained their savings for a down payment to win the fixer upper."

"But concerned about the cost of future repairs and compelled to rebuild their savings, they decided to rent out the master bedroom with its own bathroom for $1,250. From September through January, two college students on internships leased the space. That rent money gave the Kings a bit of relief, and they're looking for more."

"They just signed another renter who is expected to move in at the end of the month. They plan to rent for at least a year to steady their finances as Jonathan goes back to school for a career change. 'Unless you were gifted money, the only way to own a home if you’re middle income is you have to rent,' Natalee, 35, said. 'We see it all the time. Some people may think it’s weird, but I feel like, in Orange County, it’s the norm now to have that American Dream.'"

"Is this normal? The Kings are part of a small, but now seemingly permanent, trend of married couples taking in roommates to defray high housing costs, according to Trulia. 'The thing is home prices keep going up and up, while wages remained flat. So, it makes sense that people are having a tough time with housing costs, even as the economy has gotten better,' said Cheryl Young, a senior economist at Trulia."

"When Michelle Hardies switched careers, she and her husband, Don, wanted extra income while she built up her new business as a real estate agent. Don, who had lived with the same boarder for 12 years with his ex-wife, suggested a roommate. Their home – a four-bedroom house in Lake Stevens, Washington – was big enough and 30 minutes from northern Seattle, where rents are becoming unaffordable."

"'It’s not possible for people to rent on one income in Seattle,' Don, 58, said. 'People are being forced to move further and further out of the city to afford to rent or buy.'"

"In the past 10 months, they’ve had success renting two rooms on a month-to-month basis, largely to shorter-term boarders. There have been some issues. Two roommates were asked to move out, and another unexpectedly passed away while on vacation. Otherwise, the Hardies – who married two years ago – have been pleased with the arrangement."

"'You have to give up some privacy,' Michelle, 50, said. 'As a couple you might not do some of the things you would normally do as a couple – as newlyweds.' 'Wink, wink, nod, nod,' Don added. 'In this case, we don’t want anything too long term,' Don continued. 'We want to go back to no roommates, that’s preferred for us. But for now, it makes economic sense.'"

The San Francisco Chronicle. "At a standing-room-only town hall meeting in January at Sierra Nevada College in Incline Village, Nev., residents voiced passionate opinions on a question that has chafed the Lake Tahoe area for decades: What’s the best way to house the hordes of vacationers who descend on the lake year-round?"

"'They come and party and leave trash in the streets, and take housing away from the locals,' a longtime resident said. 'But I and many others couldn’t afford to live here unless I rented out my spare bedroom.'"

"'Opinions of STRs vary dramatically,' says Jeff Loux, town manager of Truckee. 'We hear the spectrum from ‘STRs are the problem’ to 'You can’t possibly ban these, they are the lifeblood of the economy.'"

The Denver Post. "Despite warning signs that some tight twists and turns are on the road ahead, metro Denver’s apartment developers aren’t applying the brakes. If anything, they remain firmly on the accelerator. As more forecasts call for an economic slowdown, if not a full-blown recession, later this year or next, apartment construction continues to drive forward at full throttle, leaving onlookers like Cary Bruteig, owner of Apartment Insights in Denver, concerned."

"'We will continue to start projects with 10,000 to 12,000 units a year until it is crystal clear things are headed down,' said Bruteig. 'When we have a recession, it will definitely hurt.'"

"Developers had 26,916 apartments under construction across metro Denver at the end of last year, according to his counts. Beyond those, another 25,686 are in the planning stages. The region added 12,324 new apartments last year and 13,348 the year before, according to the Denver Metro Apartment Association. To put that in perspective, over the past three decades, the number of new units added in metro Denver has averaged 4,534 a year."

"If there is a downturn, developers might come out the other side hands sweating, hearts pounding and mostly unharmed. But the sheer volume of new apartments underway, and the difficulty in changing course, suggests many projects may go over the edge of the cliff."

"And it isn’t just developers who are exposed. Investors bought up a lot of metro Denver’s older apartment buildings. They could find themselves struggling to make loan payments if rents drop too much or units stay empty."

"Even buildings that filled up in the last few years could also get into trouble. Construction loans normally have short-time frames, within 10 years, before they must be rolled over into a mortgage. If metro Denver’s apartment market gets too soft, landlords could find themselves in a bind when it comes time to refinance."

"Why not let builders build away? An apartment glut will push down rents and boost concessions, like those flat screen television some landlords are offering to get leases signed. If surplus replaces scarcity, life gets easier for tenants and the market might finally restore some of the affordability it lost this decade."

"Teo Nicolais, an instructor at Harvard Extension School, said he understands that optimism is in the DNA of developers and those who back them. He also acknowledges that being aggressive in metro Denver has paid off for the last several years. But he also argues crashes should be avoided if at all possible. When the home construction boom turned to bust last decade, it wiped out a majority of builders, derailed the careers of construction workers and sent several community banks into receivership."

"In 2010, at the bottom of the housing bust, only 498 new apartments were delivered. Now that many are hitting the market every 15 days in metro Denver, he said."