I am sorry for not having a direct answer. Bugs made a good post on this thread. The location of 4S along with the school district and the employment demographic would indicate that it will hold up for a longer period of time with respect to the downturn. Statistically speaking winter seasonally has less sales then spring simply because of the volume of buyers. I cannot say with any degree of accuracy if pricing will be higher or lower in the spring of 08 verses the winter of 07. As I said the builders are doing a good job at squeezing the supply to prop up demand.
My advice to people buying the new homes from the builder is to try to get one that falls out of escrow. I have been to sales offices where they have a quick sale on a unit that was supposed to close and didn’t because the buyer bailed out. Those tend to be priced the best and move quickly.
I usually guess wrong on stuff like this however, if employment continues to stagnate and a recession hits then giving a few more months for harder times to sink in will only help your search for lower pricing. Also there are a big number of ARM resets this fall so waiting until the spring will potentially help you as well for that. Finally, if you are going to look at the long term picture then I actually would base my purchase date on when the 10 year treasury is hitting a local bottom. If you own a home say for 15 years then say a 3/4% difference on the interest rate over that period of time for a large loan may be a factor that should not be ignored.
