I confess I can't, but perhaps there are others who may have some useful ideas. In recent days I've spoken to several people who've offered some insights. I'll share them below and invite others to chime in.
A friend who has been in the business longer than me recently opined that one factor that characterizes the end 
of both bull and bear markets is a rapid acceleration of panic. What he meant is that historically, at the end of either market, one sees a rapid increase in the rate of price increases or decreases respectively. If this is true, yesterday's AP report that "Home Prices Fall at Record Clip" might be encouraging. The closely watched seven-year-old S&P's Case-Shiller Home Price Index showed that home prices in 20 cities fell almost 13 percent in February from a year earlier. This is a record for the Index.
In my area, the lowcountry of South Carolina and Georgia, prices in Hilton Head and Bluffton, South Carolina have followed this trend and it appears that in the past three months there has been a noticeable increase in the number of downward listing price adjustments. But the national home price index has been showing declines in prices for 9 months now. In this country we are still coming to grips with the national myth prevalent several years earlier that housing prices will always increase so it's natural that many see a declining market as a blip from the norm and that some cosmic force is always pulling us back to the "good old days" of, well, 2004. I hope this is true but I lived in Asia in the mid 1990's and patterns of long term real estate price declines in countries like Japan are haunting. Again, people a lot smarter than me tell me that macro economic conditions here will prevent a similar long term housing malaise.
Perhaps the best common sense assessment I've read recently came from Charles Hughes Smith in his April 23, 2008 blog, "Want to Know When Housing Has Bottomed? Here's How." Mr. Smith believes that the "bottom will be close when buying real estate make sense as a sound business proposition." It's well worth reading his entire piece at http://www.oftwominds.com/blogapr08/RE-bottom4-08.html.
Any thoughts out there or better yet evidence that shows you've reached a bottom in your market?
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