Few people understand that the crash in the money engine behind residential real estate (refi activity) began nearly 2 years ago and has now bottomed, I think. A driver for putting in this bottom is the 1-2 year duration of construction financing which is now being converted to the permanent, e.g. the house is done! Another driver is people dropping their heloc loans to get just 1 mortgage on their property.
My State Planning Office (my state is a New England/East Coast proxy) forecasted sequential 70+ and 60+ drops in refi activity for 04 05. Using an unfair analogy - think of a Dow 10K going to what, 1700 or so?
Much is also said about ARMs this, ARMs that. ARMs, NOT CONVENTIONAL have been the smart money route since basically the mid-90s. In a speech that so few paid attention to Greenspan bemoaned several years ago how much money consumers had wasted with conventional loans. Rates are just as low or near to it now.
Of course the above only refers to borrowing driven real estate demand.
The real estate top criers ignore how much cash is out there. And no, that cash is never, ever going back into the stock market. Anything bought and resold on Ebay is basically a better investment than the stock markets...
Next up in the real estate run - land, especially rural...
Finally, I am leaving out of this the obvious bubbles in certain cities. Of course those aren't going to end well. Also, interest only loans. Those scare me. But it may be that the risk is really on the lender - not the homeowner once you see the payment as basically rent. One of the other trends I haven't thought through and how it might affect real estate is this business with states imposing special capital gain taxes on non-residents when they sell. Take a 6% commish and add 2.5, 3, 4 or 5% more to it and sellers have some big closing costs.
That's my take.
Geo.