because it is easy to guess at something father away and not have to own up to being wrong. Another reason is the industry leaders (KB homes CEO, Fannie and Freddie’s CEO’s) just came out and said 2008 will be crappy too. That puts 2009 as the earliest recovery according to industry people, add a year or two and that is propbably where they think the truth is, voila 2011. Personally I think there isn’t a time frame that is required to hit bottom, it’s fundamentals, if the market crashes 25-55% next month, recovery will start by Christmas. The problem is that history has shown housing moves downward slowly and the powers that be are doing everything they can to put the brakes on the slide. I think they should just face the inevitable and let it crash then Home Depot, Realtors, Mort companies, et al, can get back to making money and keep the economy moving, this slow death has a lot of negative side effects with the application of the brakes (dollar losing value) being the worst of them.