Warren Buffett, whose business and investment acumen has made him one of the world's wealthiest men, said in an interview published Sunday he believes the U.S. economy is already in a recession.

The Case-Shiller housing index showed declines in home prices of 14% year-over-year and 6.7% from the fourth quarter. Las Vegas led the pack with a 26% drop, followed by Miami and Phoenix with 25% and 23% declines respectively.

New home sales fell 8.5% to an annual pace of 526,000, the lowest since October 1991. The median price fell 13.3% from the same time last year and inventories rose to 11 months. While this is not related to Starbucks, there is some connection.

Four factors are widely seen as affecting whether a housing market is a good one for sellers: job growth, amount of new construction, vacancy rates, and credit availability.

The chances of selling a home on the Eastside in March 2008 ranged from a low of 7.26% to a high of 21%, with an average 13.5% absorption rate. The absorption rate is the number of homes for sale in any given month divided by the actual number of homes sold that month.

The National Association of Realtors expects the median price of U.S. resale homes to drop 1.2 percent this year, following a 1.4 percent decline in 2007, with sales of resale homes slipping for the third consecutive year.

The real estate situation in Florida is still very bleak as the numbers from the Florida Association of Realtors release show that the housing market is in Florida despite some reports of strengthening sales in South are still very weak.

Disruptions in the mortgage market and tightening credit continued to impact the housing sector in Florida in October. Statewide, sales of existing single-family homes totaled 9,165 last month while 12,846 homes sold in October 2006 for a decrease of 29 percent in the year-to-year comparison, according to the Florida Association of Realtors® (FAR).

Dataquick came out with a new report on the California housing market for November 2007 and, as expected, the news are awful.

Sales of existing homes fell to a record low in October, as even the largest drop in home prices ever wasn't enough to revive sales, according to NAR.

The St Petersburg Times reports from Florida. “Last year, a Brandon townhouse seemed like the perfect investment for Richard Wojciechowski. He bought a 1,700-square-foot Sabal Pointe home and listed it at $229,000. The retired banker thought it would be an easy sell. But 14 months later, in Hillsborough’s slowest housing market in seven years, the place is still for sale.”

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