A rose by any other name ....

..is a rose, but in the case of how this bubble ends, it is apparently anything but.

Study sees '07 `crash' in some housing (free registration required)

David Lereah, slimeball used-car salesman extraordinaire / spin doctor / professional liar of the NAR, thinks you can polish a turd by giving it another name. Or that housing won't crash if you don't use the word "crash". Please people ... soft landing. It creates the magical feeling of pillows and slow-motion euphoria. But I guess that's why dealers no longer sell "used cars", only "pre-owned". That's why 800 sq. ft. is "cozy", not "tiny". I didn't grow up on a farm but I know what bullshit smells like. Listen Dave, your lying is partially to blame for all this you phony, bought & paid for, lying thru your teeth, scumbag puppet (too harsh?) And no amount of lipstick is going to make this pig any less of a pig. You can call it a "correction", "bust", "crash", whatever, but calling it a "soft landing" brings to mind memories of Baghdad Bob and a chuckle. "Baghdad Dave" .... hmmm ... fits. Actually I think we should all call it a "crash" just to be fair: to counter-balance the lies, fraud, and collusion so prevalent in the REIC. BTW, I also refuse to call a "used" car "pre-owned". It makes me feel like a stupid sap.

excerpts:

Applying the word "crash" to sagging real estate markets in some parts of the country, a new study predicts that in the coming year, the nation's median home price will decline for the first time since the Depression.

Real estate prices in more than 100 of the nation's 379 metropolitan areas have a "significant probability of decline" by this time next year, according to Moody's economy.com

The prognosis was more dire for 20 other cities in the report's so-called "crash" area, where it predicted that prices would decline by double digits from their peaks before leveling off next year and into 2008.

The most serious price slides are seen in southwest Florida, numerous California metro areas and in the Phoenix, Las Vegas, Washington and Detroit areas, according to Zandi.

David Lereah, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, disagrees with the severity of the price downturn in the report. "I don't think I would use the word `crash,'" he said. "When you use a word like that, it's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy in the housing market. These are people's homes. Their retirement is depending on it."

Zandi defended the use of the word and his choice of 10 percent price declines as a benchmark. "It's a round number, but it's also a rule of thumb that would be applied to the transaction costs in selling your home," he said. "If you have less than 10 percent equity and your prices fall by 10 percent, you're toast."

But Zandi sees a somewhat bright side. "Even though this is a very serious correction, that these [market conditions] are things we haven't seen before, I am still arguing that the economy is going to hold together, that there's enough strength to overcome housing's weakness."

"That's nonsense," Kasriel said. "The housing market is an accident waiting to happen. We're already seeing a slowdown in employment growth, and a lot of it is housing-related. We're also seeing a slowdown in consumer spending, and that's housing-related."

"It's beyond me how something that has dominated the U.S. economy in the past four years and is clearly in a recession now won't have spillover effects on the rest of the economy."