My team meets every monday morning at 8:00 for our "Focus Group" meeting.  We do this to share ideas, set goals and get our week off to a productive start.  Among the many topics we discussed this morning was the crystal ball prediction.  My friend and one of my fellow teammates is Darrell.  Darrell and I always seem to approach things from different points of view, but almost always come to the same conclusion.  On this particular topic, I agreed with Larry Murphy and he seemed to agree with the opinion of the other gentleman named in the LVRJ article, Steve Bottfeld.  I see the Las Vegas market staying slow with maybe a little upward bump in the summer of '08, but full upward trend towards recovery starting in the the first half of '09.  Darrell feels that our recovery will occur this coming spring.  Las Vegas has been touted as the 2nd best city for job growth in the nation.  There is a lot of building going on right now and the employment upswing usually occurs BEFORE projects are completed.  In Darrell's opinion, a lot of people are speculating that the market is going to recover, so buying will pick-up and people that have their homes listed will see that the market is bouncing back and withdraw their listings so they can once again reap the benefits of a strong market.  With listings being withdrawn and a strong influx of new buyers, Darrell feels that the number of homes on the market will be reduced by half and our consumption will be up enough to create positive appreciation come summer of '08.  Now, I don't agree with Darrell, but I respect his insight and understanding of the Las Vegas economy.  So, what we do agree on is the fact that now is the time we need to position ourselves in front of the coming trend.  If it happens in spring '08 we'll be ready.  If it doesn't happen until spring '09, we'll be that much more ready.  Question is, will you be ready?