Agreed. Even if there is not a mandatory 20% down, the tighter lending standards should have a similar effect for a while. Until 10 years from now when the cycle starts over again (picture dawn-of-the-dead zombies chanting “everyone wants to live here…there’s a housing shortage…must not get priced out of the market…”).

Anyway, this makes me wonder: what about the PMI that is required when less than 20% is put down on a place? In the past, it seemed like bull$h|+ that the buyer had to pay the lender’s premium on insurance which insured the lender against default. Given recent history, this was appropriate. I think a lot of people avoided PMI by purchasing 80/10/10 loans, but does anyone know if there has been a deluge of PMI claims by lenders now? I would think so but haven’t read anything about this.