In short: the growth of existing property prices seem to be slowing down, however there is a housing crisis and they need to build around 3mil homes by 2020, therefor land banking seems to be the way to go!

However, since this bubble involved a HISTORIC runup in prices, I think you can reasonably expect things to be much worse this time.In addition, our country is at or near a crisis point.

Very nice presentation here:

US Sub Prime Crisis In GRAPHICS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7073131.stm :popcorn:

KEEP in mind this is written in NOV 07 before Wall Street and the Fed shut down to the media ...

It may be decades until we see the markets of 5 years ago.As far as the downward trend and the sub-prime crisis as it relates to REOs, I think we will continue to head downward (it will get worse from an economy perspective) for another year or two then will turn upward.Of course the 'downturn' is when you buy and the 'upturn' is when you sell, if you choose to sell.The hardest part, of course, is getting the lenders to lend.

He said that the local banks weren't really affected by the savings and loan crisis that we are experiencing.

--Mark Twain"REAL ESTATE CRISIS!"

All it takes for rents to go down is an overabundance of supply - possibly as the result of a foreclosure crisis and debt crisis.

Jason is being quite polite and diplomatic.

These measures serve not only to subsidize failure- thereby encouraging it; but to make the crisis worse, and the period of recovery a whole lot longer.

Yes some tightening up was necessary as banks’ guidelines prior to the mortgage crisis may have been too loose, but now they seem to have gone too far the other direction.