The old adage that history repeats itself can be just as worrisome as it is comforting. But in a time of stress, like a housing crisis, recession or other economic downturn, it’s human nature to string together comparisons to the past as a way to understand the present says Mark Fleming, chief economist with Fortune 500 financial corporation First American.
This fall, the housing market started to seem downright Dickensian to Fannie Mae CEO Priscilla Almodovar, as she described “a tale of two markets” in an interview with MarketWatch. For the holiday season, though, Fleming tells Fortune that there’s another great Dickens tale that’s apt for the current state of things: homebuyers are being haunted, like Ebenezer Scrooge himself, by the ghosts of housing markets past.
