[tommy2]

Going to rehit this again since the papers have been full of bad RE news. Here is my take on the current environment:

This bubble had to burst and this subprime issue was well known within the industry. Just like "everybody" knew that many of the dotcom stocks 6-7 years ago were priced irrationally, so to did the bankers, appraisers, developers, and investors know that the RE market was going to crash. Nobody knew when, though.

I'll take questions, but here is the bottom line: things haven't bottomed out yet. As bad as it is now, its going to get worse. One of three scenarios is likely to play out: a soft landing on the bottom (12-18 months of things slowly getting worse), a hard crash (within 6 months and this could easily drive us into recession with the gas price issue and the instability in the Middle East making an assist), or a government bailout (this could easily happen to avoid situation #2).

Fire away. I will cross post in Finance and OOT (since that's what I did the last two times).