I read an article today that made me actually wonder what the H - E x 2 hockey sticks is going on in our industry?  Below are some excerpts of an a New York Times article by VIKAS BAJAJ and EDMUND L. ANDREWS.

I just also spoke with a friend who is a land manger for a major local developer. "We are dumping land at ‘nobody needs it' prices" he tells me.  I know that there are many people out there stating that the media is scaring the public, but I'm not so sure.   Here's the excerpts from Reports Suggest Broader Losses From Mortgages

• Merrill Lynch said yesterday that it would take a charge for mortgage-related securities on its books that is $3 billion more than the $5 billion it expected just two weeks ago.
• And a report from the National Association of Realtors showed that sales of existing homes in September fell twice as much as economists had expected, to their lowest level in nearly 10 years
• In a new report to be issued today, the Joint Economic Committee of Congress predicts about two million foreclosures by the end of next year on homes purchased with subprime mortgages. That estimate is far higher than the Bush administration's prediction in September of 500,000 foreclosures, which in itself would be a tidal wave compared with recent years. Congressional aides provided details of the report yesterday to The New York Times.
• The Joint Economic Committee estimates that the lost of real estate wealth just from foreclosures on subprime loans will be about $71 billion. An additional $32 billion would be lost because foreclosed homes tend to drive down the prices of other houses in the neighborhood.
• Those figures would cause a decline of $917 million in lost property tax revenue to state and local governments, which will also have to spend more on policing neighborhoods with vacant homes. The states most likely to be hard hit fall into two categories: those where prices had been rising fastest, like California and Florida, and Midwest states with weak economies, like Michigan and Ohio, where people with low or moderate incomes made heavy use of subprime loans to become homeowners and consolidate debts.
• Economists at Goldman Sachs have predicted prices will drop by 15 percent, meaning an overall decline of more than $3 trillion; other forecasters have said the decline could be 20 percent or more.
• In the next 18 months, interest rates on more than two million homes loans will reset to higher adjustable rates.
• Inventories of unsold existing homes rose last month to their highest level in almost 20 years.
• The housing bust has also led to job losses. From the start of 2003 to March 2006, housing-related businesses like mortgage companies, home builders and contractors added 1.3 million jobs, or about 23 percent of all new jobs created in that period, according to an analysis by Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com.  Since then, the housing business has shed 383,000 jobs, while the rest of the economy has added nearly three million jobs.
• Late yesterday afternoon, Bank of America said it would lay off 3,000 people across the company and has replaced the head of its investment banking division.

Providing that all of this is true, and I can't see why these numbers and well respected sources would lie, things are not that great.  It is not just media hype.  The market is going to keep going south for a good while and we all had better get used to it.  I'm not planning to move anytime soon!!