You just want to make sure that they're not in a downward spiral...

Is it up in coming from a down spiral or is it falling?

Use descriptive, straightforward terms that tell the physical attributes of the home (like marble, spiral staircase, gourmet kitchen, and solid bamboo flooring).

Its kind of spiraling out of control, we doubled in size last month.

I cringe when folks talk about "spiraling debt" and grandstand with "debt clocks."

Government employee unions control California, and until they are seriously dealt with, we will continue the downward spiral.

Hopefully, for my sake, the real estate market will continue its downward spiral, so this time next year there may be some real deals that actually cash flow with a reasonable down payment.

I think that the market has been spiraling into recession well over the last three or four quarters.

That's about as much leverage as I want anyway.As far as HELOC's go, I'm assuming that most people want to lock up long term fixed rate loans, not have a ton of floating rate debt at whatever point the worlds' lenders ascertain that the future US govt cash flows available to somehow repay the spiraling debt and unfunded liabilities (a mere $100T or $1M per household), are woefully and absurdly inadequate.

No one seems to think that Bernanke will try to inflate but will fail, leading us into a deflationary spiral.