Commodify Your Home

This column was originally published on RealMoney on Dec. 6 at 9:25 a.m. EST. It's being republished as a bonus for TheStreet.com readers. For more information about subscribing to RealMoney, please click here.

If it weren't so personal, if it weren't so your home, you would understand for certain why Toll Brothers(TOL Quote) and the rest of the cohort keep climbing.

I mean it. So many of us own homes that we feel the sting much more personally than we would if it were PVC pipe -- still very much in glut, by the way, so be careful of PW Eagle(PWEI Quote) -- that we can't possibly believe that Bob Toll knows what a bottom looks like. Today there's another article about how homes have lost 20% to 30% of their value in once-hot areas. Heaven forbid.

But if I were to tell you, for example, that stocks had dropped 20%-30%, you would say, "Maybe they are cheaper." How about steel? "That might clean the glut." How about semiconductors? How about sweaters? Men's suits? ...