I would argue that this time is different in at least one respect, and I believe that the down trend will be both sharper and shorter as this was mostly caused by a finance bubble, where the one in 86-90 was mostly boomers getting to home buying age all at once.
I believe also that people are missing the fact that the housing prices in most area’s were about flat from 1990 – 2000, so there was a little catching up to do, and that home prices in the better area’s may not drop as much as most on this board think.