Why is investment news still surprised of housing glut

OK, so I'm watching the business news this morning and the story is that the markets are reacting badly to the housing market, that there's no recovery in sight, and other such blah...

"Old story" we should be thinking. That'd be like me reacting negatively to news that I'm fat.

We've talked about the housing glut, falling sales, and inflated home prices. Sure there are pockets where it's better, but at the macro level we have too many empty homes sitting out there (they're still building more), priced too high, and there aren't as many buyers as there used to be. It's ugly and it's going to stay ugly.

Here's a story from the Businomics blog that covers the housing glut pretty well. He calculates that at current construction and purchasing rates it'll take almost 5 years to work off the surplus.

Now we can quit being surprised when the housing market doesn't turn around any time soon.