[mcmama]

Is the housing market as bad as the media says? In my area we have had a slowing, but only a small price drop. The bottom may still be yet to come. Other markets have pretty much bottomed out. And some are still going strong - more slow with the clampdown on mortgages and rise in foreclosures, but still strong.

I thought of this after Black Friday, when record numbers of people were awake at 4 am to go shopping, but the New York Times had a headline about a recession.

Is this really happening, or is it media hype? What is it like where you live?

[pattiewrites]

There are four houses for sale in my neighborhood. They have been on the market for months with no bites. It was not like this a few years ago here! I wonder if more people going out for the sales is a telling sign. If they have less to spend, the dollar needs to stretch as far as possible. I don't think we will know for sure until the end of the shopping season when they have a better look at the overall picture. Will the shopping trend continue or did people grab the deals and now it will slow down. I guess time will tell. There seemed to be a lot more tags on our church giving tree this year.

[MissyChrissy]

A friend of mine lives in Arizona and she says on every corner people are desperately trying to sell their cars to make mortgage payments. It's really depressing.

Here (upstate NY), my office happens to be in the mall and black Friday was busy, but Saturday it went back to business as usual. Other store owners have been congregating and talking about it. Of course, the economy here has always sucked-but I do think it's worse than normal now.