[editor-surveyor]

"(at current rate of sales) for 7 1/2 months...!"

Without your parenthetical caveat, the above would be quite remarkable, no?

The current rate of sales is mostly attributable to the exit from the mortgage market of several formerly active players, coupled with a significant elevating of net worth standards in qualifying for loans, no?

[grey_whiskers]

Those are true, but there are others--the elevating of net worth standards to qualify for loans is *because* the market for mortgage-backed-securities dried up, and also because the "margin of safety" built into the loans by ever-rising home prices was no longer there.

In other words, the risk of the bundled mortgages was defined in a time of slowly rising home prices with sensible loans; but over time the bundles reflected both highly rising prices and senseless loans.

Something had to give...

Cheers!