No House Party

From The Street:

Maven: No House Party
By Marek Fuchs

Let me explain. From the conglomerates of the 1960s on to the Internet of the 1990s and real estate of the current decade, overvalued markets are always justified by the business media with constant story lines about how different things are this time. Once it starts to become apparent (like now) that there is such a thing as gravity, we enter the classic second state of business media delusion. And it's potentially more dangerous.
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Having justified the bubble for so long, the business media never simply walks away. What always comes, instead, are a series of articles about how the worst of the damage has already been done and that it's no big deal, just part of the natural course of things -- a flesh wound. Moreover, that there are safe havens amid the carnage or that there are actual bargains! The reasoning is formulaic and often heavy on buzzwords, jargon and quotes from people who have a reason to tout the lunacy back into existence.
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Examples have been chronic in print and on television so let me touch upon a few so you'll know what to recognize. After all, this is not a market to jump back into. The demographic push of baby boomers buying homes coinciding with the taming of inflation (and thus interest rates) over the past generation has been enormous. With baby boomers starting to downsize and inflation and interest rates trends, at best, in flux, this is a market that could very well not perform better than inflation over the next generation.
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"We are," he said, "transitioning from a period where people had to pay the offer price or above to a period where they are looking at a more normalized bid/offer spread. It's just they don't know ... where that proper pricing will be."

Sounds like prices are plummeting, buddy.

The key step to assessing whether a market has hit bottom is to read and listen. When you hear people honestly assessing the damage and professing no hope -- that's a bottom. When people are in denial and are slinging jargon -- well, we ain't there yet.
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Until such troubles are spoken about openly, a bottom is not in sight.

By the way, before we continue this "adjustment" any further, are any of you gullibles out there interested in a three-floor beauty? Good schools and the neighbors are usually tolerant. Since I can't take it with me, I figure I'm better off with immediate cash.