I found the following article from Chuck Carnevale on Seeking Alpha today:Warren Buffett Was Right: Ignore Political and Economic ForecastsSeldom does a day go by when we don't have a doom and gloom thread on BP about the financial world melting down, hyperinflation, or some other nonsense.

Recently in our area, reality seems to have finally sunk in.The economic realities have begun to cause rental owners to really react and aggressively cut prices on their units.No new jobs, layoffs, less income, people leaving the area.Both SFR and multi-family are affected and those with no mortgage or lower runtime cost structures have more flexibility with their pricing and are able to find tenants, though no where near the quality of yesteryear.Previous to this year, rents had remained fairly stable maybe down 5-10% but nothing compared to the 20% we are beginning to see now as desperate owners are realizing that they may lose their investments if they do not find tenants.The lower quality tenants actually have their pick of units now versus unable to find anything.As far as investing in new properties, it is a dangerous game if not backed by cash reserves, today's "low-money-down" owner is tomorrow's foreclosure.We see nothing on the horizon to change this pattern, rents will seemingly continue to drop and day-to-day management will continue to take more time and effort due to the lower quality.

Instead the cause is a multitude of economic and political factors not mention good ole' fashion GREED.

Can anyone advice what they would do if it was their start up in current economic downturn?

The other scenario I can see is the collapse of our economic system in which case there would be no more money for them to operate on and the states would break up into smaller communities.

Eddie,It's economic conditions such as we have today that leads people to have that freeloader mentality; if it's not free, they can't afford it!

This issue is, an economical one and not necessarily "socioeconomic " (Although in a sense it is...).

But in todays economic climate the dti ratio guidelines will require a low income worker to save more physical downpayment money than others would just because his income is low and income is one of the factors in DTI.

In this economic environment the key to the negotiation is your income.I sincerely wish you the best.Hopefully the Administration will stop their current policies/agenda and work on actually doing what is necessary and proven to create jobs and get the economy moving again.

One waves a tax cut to the rich with the "trickle down economics" philosophy, while the other one just gives money away and call it job creation.