By comparison, my disfiguring scars, missing teeth, and facial tattoos don't even get me threatening street urchin status in Oakland.

See Blue Jays, Toronto.

Pretentious, thy name rhymes with 'bling'.

The US housing market might not suffer too badly for too long, might.  However in the places where the runup has been greatest, it will probably take much, much time to find our bottom.  Last California cycle saw it's peak in 1990 and didn't hit bottom until 1997, that's a long time to wait it out.

And it's even worse now because of all the insane loans out there.  80% on ARMs, a ton of those are IO ARMS.  These haven't even begun to reset.  When they do and people are $100,000 underwater, it's Bankruptcy/foreclosure city.  And all that housing you couldn't build fast enough?  Builders are severely discounting their stock right now, which puts added downward pressure on the resale market, which is where the comps going forward come from.

It is going to get ugly.  And the Feds are not going to lower rates any time soon to cushion the loss.

Check out this blog for a running discussion of all things housing related.

1. In the Northeast and Midwest, housing prices are actually falling right now, with some sellers unable to find buyers even after six months of listing. In Australia, prices have dropped 20% in the last year, after four years straight of hard rises - and the market is crumbling. UK ditto. Canada is dropping, with only Vancouver holding flat by virtue of climate, Olympics coming in 2010, and limited land availability.
2. Over 70% of new mortgages in the California market over the last five years have been interest only - these turn into deathtrap mortgages when housing prices start dropping hard and people begin to owe more than they borrowed, with no actual possibility that they'll ever pay off their mortgage. People start to bail, owing thousands, chaos ensues.
3. This year, billions of dollars worth of 5-year variable rate mortgages left their honeymoon rates of 4-5% and jumped to rates of 7-8%, leaving people who 'upgraded' to suddenly either have to sell and downgrade to something they can afford to pay for, or double their mortgage payments each month. Next year, the number of mortgages that will experience this is due to triple. Ditto the year after that.
4. Realtors in the northeast and midwest are leaving the profession in droves, saying bad things are on the way and claiming people aren't buying. When realtors bail, real estate is in trouble.
5. Flippers have moved their money into the share market, because nobody is buying flips anymore. Hence the sudden share market spike, and real estate price drop.
6. New starts have continued to increase, despite sales decreasing sharply. There's a big oversupply of new developments across North America, especially in the cities, and city councils all over are having to deal with holes in the ground that are being left abandoned by developers on high priced pieces of land.
7. Rentals no longer cover mortgage costs - not by a long shot - leaving people in financial trouble no option but to sell, and since nobody is buying, they're selling at a loss. Panicselling equals big price drops.
8. I just sold my condo, taking a nice profit but missing the peak value spot by a few months. We're going to go rent for a while, thereby cutting our monthly expenses by nearly half without any downgrade in living situation. Once the drop has hit bottom, we're getting back in, but we bought 18 months ago for $197k. We sold yesterday for $295k. If we'd have sold a month ago, we could have got $335k. A neighbor listed his identical property at that price two weeks ago because another neighbor got $335k a month ago, and he can't get anyone to even look at it. He's now dropping his price to $290k in hope of getting a nibble.

I could go on. In fact, I just did. Don't hold on expecting a bounce - there's no buyers in the market right now - only long term investors and silly money from people hoping that a bounce will happen. Sell if you can and wait it out, because this is just the beginning of a really bad scene.

As for Lew, he won't have to worry until 2011, and chances are that'll coincide with prices stabilizing, if not growing.

And isn't, um, a tad overweight...?