celgins - 9:13 pm on Aug 12, 2007 (gmt 0)

I know we have quite a few Webmasters here who focus on this industry and I'm wondering what your plans are based on the current state of the market?

At present, my web development duties have nothing to do with the real estate industry, but I am searching for a house to buy. We keep hearing... "it's a buyer's market." That may be, but the only reason it seems to be, is because seller's homes aren't selling. This, of course, drives many sellers and home builders to lower their asking prices.

My understanding is that there is going to be a major fallout for Independents over the next 12-18 months. Loans are going to be given but only under strict circumstances and under the same guidelines that were used in the 1970's.

I sort of agree, but I'm also not an industry analyst. While I think lenders will be more critical of who they lend to, I don't think they will totally avoid new homebuyers, or even "risky" homebuyers. Maybe they should spend more time investigating the purpose of the home purchase. If someone has purchased three homes in the past 1.5 years under three separate ARM's -- what does that tell you?

Homes are for living, not for flipping.

True.... and as stated earlier -- flipping helped influence some of the current problems we're seeing.