Its not all bad news out there……

“Sure, there was a lot of sound (the housing bubble grows) and fury (the bubble pops) in the last decade.  But numbers released this morning show that home prices rose by 46% between January 2000 and December 2009.  That’s way above the rate of inflation.  So odds are if you bought a house at the beginning of the decade and sold it at the end of the decade, you made money.  That’s a big deal, given how many people (who don’t wind up as anecdotes in news stories) buy a house and live in it for 10, or 20, or 30 years. ”

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/02/house_prices_rose_50_in_the_au.html?ft=1&f=93559255