US Housing Market in Trouble

It didn't take a financial genius to see that this

Sales of existing homes plunged in March by the largest amount in 18 years, reflecting in part rising troubles in the subprime mortgage market.

...

The National Association of Realtors reported Tuesday that sales of existing homes fell by 8.4 percent in March, the sharpest drop since a 12.6 percent plunge in January 1989.

The decline, which was three-times what had been expected, pushed sales down to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.12 million units, the slowest pace in nearly three years.

...

"The number of homeowners trying to unload their properties is still so ridiculously high that pressures on prices will likely continue," said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors. "How much lower the housing market can go is unclear, but it is not likely that we have seen the bottom."

and this

Massachusetts foreclosure filings spiked by 47 percent in March as many local home owners struggled to make monthly mortgage payments, a new report said.

were inevitable. With all the people taking interest-only and adjustable rate mortgages counting on the real estate market to keep going up, it was a no-brainer. This is reminiscent of the stock market dot-com bubble.