I was stunned to see the 33% drop in Real Estate sales in the DFW market place today. Home prices are down a whopping 15% from their highs. I think we Texans’ were naive enough to think we were not going to see the worst of this economy in our state. Oil and Gas seemed to give us a nice buffer for a while, but my have the mighty fallen. I can get gas for under a buck fifty. Who would have thunk it? I don’t think we have seen the bottom of the oil barrel either. It looks like it is having trouble holding on to $50 a barrel.

Of course the cause of this whole mess is spending more than we make. Everyone seems to have decided to spend 1.25 for every $1.00 they made and the result is a lot of worthless noncollectable debt and many over priced houses that should never have been built for people spending too much. The bottom line is the housing market and a lot of other goods to have to depreciate to a point where the average American can afford them again. So 15% seems like a lot but I am going to guess the number is closer to 20-25% in the drop of home values in DFW. Of course that varies greatly by neighborhood. I wouldn’t expect anything inside the loop to drop more than 5-10%.