Passage Two Of all the unfortunate circumstances to emerge from the housing bust (房地产萧条) , one of the most underappreciated (未能充分评价的) is the development of a market-timing mindset (思维模式) when it comes to the decision about when to buy a home. I saw that The New York Times has a story about using price-to-rent ratios to tell whether or not it’s time to buy. By comparing the cost of owing a home to renting one, you can determine if houses are under or overpriced. If houses are underpriced, you want to get in on that. If they are overpriced, you don’t. This is a market-timing mentality. And the possibility of it sticking around makes me nervous. Now, trying to time the housing market in fact, before the bubble burst, was a fantastic idea. Is it a good idea these days to check out of some markets that probably have further to fall. More broadly, though, the development of a market-timing mindset in housing is worrisome. That’s because it’s not clear to you at what point metrics like price-to -rent ratios go from being tools used by homebuyers to stand-alone reasons people decide to buy. If everyone starts talking about how “cheap” houses are, don’t you want to grab your piece of that action? This could prove particularly dangerous in the realm of investor-bought houses. There is a solid financial reason to own a house and rent it out: you get to collect the rent. Of course, there’s another reason, too, which is the hope that the house will become worth more over time and eventually you’ll be able to sell at a profit. I am not arguing that we are on the tip of Housing Bubble II. Nor am I arguing that price-to-rent ratios are themselves dangerous. Quite the opposite. All I’m saying is that during the housing run-up, we moved far away from the mindset that houses are first and foremost homes. The investment component of owning a house became more and more important. A little bit of that in the popular mindset isn’t a problem. I just hope it continues to stay in its place. 46. According to the report of The New York Times , we can conclude that __________