Quote

So much value has been lost in the housing market that people are now buying. If there's any activity in the housing market, it's because values have plummeted to such depths that the 47% can now afford to live in a government-purchased house, or something like that.

A housing renaissance has begun. This may be hard to believe after the dizzying, six-year-long crash in home sales, construction and house prices. But housing turned the corner last year, and it will take off in 2013.

In 2007, in the early 2007, everybody saw the housing market was falling, and at any given moment a lot of people thought it was going to fall more, and a lot of people thought it was going to rebound. You just didn't know.

Following an extended boom in housing, the demand for homes began to weaken in mid-2005. By the middle of 2006, sales of both new and existing homes had fallen about 15 percent below their peak levels. Homebuilders responded to the fall in demand by sharply curtailing construction.

It is hard to be enthusiastic about the economy's prospects when house prices are falling: Households spend less, small business owners can't use homes as collateral for loans and local governments are forced to cut jobs and programs as property-tax revenue disappears.

No one should expect the value of their house to appreciate quickly - counting on your home to be a significant part of your retirement saving isn't a winning strategy - but it is reasonable to expect that prices generally will rise with at least the rate of inflation for some time to come.

When people retire, their income drops much more sharply than their consumption. As a result, they stop saving and start drawing down the assets they've acquired during their high-saving years. That could start to put upward pressure on interest rates and downward pressure on stock prices.

The housing market will get worse before it gets better.

Within a few months in 2008, household finances were crushed as asset values fell, millions of jobs were lost, countless credit cards were canceled, and thousands of homes were foreclosed on.

The impact of the downturn is starting to feel very real. House prices and the housing market have been taking the knock for some time and that's affecting people.