"One reader suggested a topic on when a housing market buy-opportunity may arise. "How about a general consensus on whether anyone’s ready to begin the lowballing? I mentioned, a week or so ago, that a co-worker of mine was going to make an offer on a ridiculously overpriced home in Telford, PA. Spoke to her today and, while she still made an offer, thanks to the advice I gave her she lowballed (and will list her home appropriately)."

"She won’t tell me how much she lowballed by yet (she doesn’t want to 'jinx' her offer), but she said it was a LOT less than the asking price (the home was listed at $309K and zillowed/ABCed in the low $200s - my hunch is she used this newfound information as a guideline)."

"So…feeling somewhat empowered, today I contacted my realtor (very nice woman - zero pressure since I’ve been looking for 2 years now and she still hasn’t given up on me) and asked her to tell me honestly how she feels about offering low bids. I found a home that might be nice for my son and I and, if after seeing it I still feel that way, am pretty sure I will toss in a low bid (which, based on when the people last bought the home, would give them the ol’ '1% above inflation' appreciation). Anyone else thinking about it yet?"

Another replied, "If you have studied the bubble charts, you should know we are not going to see the bottom of this thing until 2010-2012. There is a pretty good consensus on that timeline."

"However, if you cannot wait it out, your strategy is the best. Zillow existing listings and if they bought pre-2000, you can attempt some low balls. The fallacy is if they refinanced to 'pull out equity' which Zillow does not tell you."

"You will have a lot of sellers scoff at lowballs for now. The winning strategy is to make a lot of lowball offers, and you might have a 5% chance at acceptance. You are picky about the house you want (which is a great thing). So if it is nice house that might fetch 'FMV,' chances of success are small. I applaud your efforts regardless of outcome. Good luck!"

From the recommended article. "Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that San Diego is going to experience a housing downturn. Our task is to try to figure out what past housing downturns say about how our hypothetical bust might play out."

"The duration of the price run-up, the tremendous growth in real estate employment, the prevalence of negative-amortization and other 'exotic' mortgages, the low levels of home equity, the sheer magnitude of the price increases, and the resultant crushing lack of home affordability; all of these elements are unique to this unprecedented housing boom."

"Muddying the waters further, we have a new Fed chairman who was talking like an inflation hawk on Monday but who in 2002, when financial market prospects seemed a little bleaker, proposed monetary policies that he likened to dropping cash from helicopters."

"The past two cycles are quite helpful in suggesting a duration for post-boom housing slumps. The accompanying graph shows that the prior two busts were very similar in duration, and that in each case, the bulk of the valuation decline took about six years."

"What will be the effect on nominal prices? This question requires us to make even more assumptions. First, we have to figure out where the price-to-income ratio will bottom out. Again, the past two cycles are fairly consistent here. In both cases, as the graph shows, home prices found a 'floor' at about seven times incomes. That seems as good an assumption as any."

"If 2005 marked the end of the housing boom and 2006 the first year of the downturn, another assumption, yes, but one I believe will be borne out by history, we end up with the housing market bottoming out in 2011. In order for the price-to-income ratio to get down to the level of prior market lows, and assuming the 4.6 percent income growth rate, San Diego home prices will have to drop by 36 percent."

"So we should probably also run the calculation under the assumption that our Fed head does indeed fire up the chopper fleet..we find that home prices would have to decline by 23 percent within the allotted time period. So, the Ghost of Housing Busts Past says that home prices will drop roughly between 25 percent and 35 percent from their 2005 levels, and that they will take around six years to do so."

"Will he be right? To answer that question, look back at the painfully long string of assumptions we had to make just to get this far. Put another way: who knows? There are certainly an awful lot of cross-currents that could cause this post-boom housing market to behave quite differently than those that came before it."