I think it’s remarkable the way you can call some posters condescending and others delusional in the same thread.
Your point on housing returning to 7.5x median income is a good guess, based I think on Rich’s graph of housing:income ratios over the past 25 years. If someone had chanced on that data in 2002, a cautious reasoned response would have been, “the housing:income ratio is very near the peak of previous cycles. Since prices have a cyclic element, there is a growing risk of housing price decline (relative to income) over the next year.”
I imagine your response had you seen the graph in 2002 would have been to say that housing:income is GUARANTEED to fall 30% from 2002 levels by 2008 because THE DATA shows that’s how long peak-to-trough takes and if you can’t see that you’re DELUSIONAL and living in FEAR.
You didn’t just say prices would drop, you said 30-50% by 2010. That’s pretty specific, and much better than I could do, but I don’t understand the business cycle as well as you.
A year is a long time, though. Could you name the day we’ll reach 30% decline for the county? The month? Maybe you think it would take someone absurdly overconfident to make such a specific prediction, and you’d like to stick to just the year.
