Bill Fleckenstein mentioned some data points from Joel Locker of FBN Securities.

• As of the end of Q2, vacant rental units stood at 10% (about 3.94 million units), vs. the 43-year average of 7.16%. That 2.84% difference equates to about 1.12 million excess rental units above the historic mean.
• The overall housing vacancy rate was 14.36% in Q2, against a 43-year average high of 10.75%. (There are roughly 130 million total units, with 18.6 million vacant.)
• To get back to the 10.75% mean, the U.S. would have to create about 4.7 million households, or in other terms about 6.6 million jobs (assuming 1.4 jobs per household), without having built one additional housing unit.

And as I’ve commented previously, in a speculative market, like housing, fundamentals like this mean little, except in the very long term. And we all know what happens in the very long term. But they do give you an idea of where you are.