Recent increases in home prices have already ignited new talk of a housing bubble. Don’t believe it.

Some regions are seeing a surge of housing demand amid extremely low interest rates and investors searching for opportunities. And it is true that some regions are up more than 25% from their bottom. But as Dan Greenhaus of BTIG LLC points out, none of the 20 cities tracked by the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller home-price indexes is back to its peak level.

“Those previous peaks may not have been justified but they were and are largely seen as ‘bubble levels,’” said Mr. Greenhaus. “Can home prices again be in a bubble and yet be 27% below their previous peak? Perhaps, but we don’t yet think so.”

From Earth911: Now up in the remote hills of Malibu, Calif., a home has just been built using an even more unconventional waste material – an old Boeing 747 aircraft – and the results are breathtaking. Aptly named “Wing House,” the home uses both of the plane’s wings for the majority of its roof, while the tail section’s two stabilizers make up the roof for the master bedroom.

From New York Times:
“It’s an inherently erotic landscape,” said Mr. Rawlins, who found in Mr. Gifford’s work motives and inspirations of a kind that were once considered joyous, until a plague came along and cloaked them with a shroud.

“The Stonewall generation invented what I call this architecture of seduction,” Mr. Rawlins said, referring to a style marked by spare interiors engineered to foster outdoor living; by spare but theatrical geometries; and by stage effects like mirrored ceilings and expanses of window wall.

 "The good thing is that you see the pros and cons of the house that they end up buying," Chan says. "They film them talking about the trade-offs. Those are very real conversations that people have. Usually by the end of the show, someone makes a compromise because there's no perfect house."