Real Estate Peaked?

Read this real-estate article in the NYT. Please tell me this bubble will deflate slowly and peacefully.

The median price - half the homes sold for more and half for less - fell 5.7 percent from August, to $215,700. Still, prices were up 1.9 percent from a year earlier. Also, the August home sales figures were was revised down to 1.197 million from an initial reading of 1.237 million. Sales were strongest in the Midwest, where they were up 24.9 percent, and the South, up 5.6 percent. The Northeast, the region with the least amount of new home-building activity, was down 20 percent and the West was down 11.8 percent.

When everyone around you talks about how easy and lucrative real-estate is, and when people are trying to sell their shacks for $1.2 mil, you know that the bull-run is about to come to an end. With interest rates inevitably on the rise (FOMC meeting today) and with the markets on the verge of breakdown, there is no doubt that current land valuations can be sustained. Stocks of interest: KBH DHI LEN PHM.