I’ll say one thing about the people who are sitting this one out – they aren’t losing money right now and they aren’t sweating their positions.

F_L_Union – surely you can see that the current direction of both the price trend and the volume of sales is down and all indicators are that the pace of decline is picking up steam. There are no data to suggest a turn right now other than some wishful thinking from people who have, at this point, no remaining credibility.

Whether the whole thing bottoms out at -30% or -70% nobody can possibly know. But we do know there have been declines and we do know it’s going to decline more before it’s over. I direct your attention to just 18 months ago when the RE bulls were still reassuring everyone that the market was just going to level off, take a breather and then resume these increases. This in spite of a ton of data to the contrary. They were wrong then and they’re wrong now.

You have expressed the contrary view and there’s nothing wrong with that. Now lets see you come up with some data, some factor in the local economy, some factual reason to have that hope other than “it hasn’t happened yet” that supports your opinion. We have information and analysis that supports why we hold our opinions – do you? If so, we’d LOVE to see it. I direct your attention to Piggington’s motto below.

Eventually this downtrend will reverse course and from that point RE will be a great investment – that’s what a lot of people on this board are waiting for. Until then, time is on their side and they are the freaking geniuses.

Try to remember the most important rule of RE: You make your money when you buy, not when you sell.

It doesn’t matter what all those people have right now as a result of all their “hard work” and entrepreneurial spirit. It’s not what you make that counts, it’s what you can keep.