3/20    There's a correlation between home prices and interest rate right?
        As long as the government intends to buffer the housing crash,
        home prices shouldn't drop much right?
        \_ More money => inflation.  As long as money is cheap (i.e. interest
           rates are low) we'll have lots of money chasing houses.  However,
           with the foreclosures, there are houses being dumped, so prices are
           probably going down.
        \_ I don't know of any studies that have shown a correlation between
           interest rates and housing prices, in fact what little evidence
           there is tends to point the other way, since interest rates and
           home prices both tend to go down during a recession.
        \_ I assume you're one of the "should I or shouldn't I buy a house
           now?" people.  I'll tell you what my wife and I did, decide for
           yourself if it makes sense for your life: we both had good jobs at
           the time and could have bought a much larger house, instead we
           chose to get a house we could afford on either income (so a job
           loss wouldn't be extra devastating since I was at a startup then),
           given our $$$ range we then decided where we wanted to live
           starting with country and narrowing it down to the greater bay area
           taking into account transit/commute options, how 'nice' the area
           is, food, potential future of area, etc.  Once we chose an area
           (near BART, not too far from freeway, bad food but improving), we
           looked at houses in our range and a bit above and below.  Chose
           house.  Here's the key part:  we got a loan with no fees, points,
           or other BS.  Rates were quite a bit higher then so we took what we
           could get on the loan given the no-BS requirement.  As rates
           dropped we refi'd a few times.  Each time was no-fee-BS.  Our
           current payment is low enough that my wife no longer has to do the
           9-5 and we're doing great.  Buy something you can see yourself
           living in for *many* years and possibly until retirement.  If you
           intend to move around more often than once every 5 years or so then
           renting may be a better option for you.  Selling/buying a house has
           *very* high costs that will eat any potential increase in property
           value you may have obtained over a short time period.  YMMV.  Do not
           try to time the housing market.  If it was that easy then no one
           would ever lose money on real estate.  Best of luck in your house
           hunting.
           \_ This is the best financial advice I have seen on the motd.