Finally there's some good news for the housing market. The market's still terrible, but you can feel better about it if you take Lexapro.

Researchers at Decision Resources have found that Lexapro is the leading single agent used in anxiety therapy. Know for it's superior safety and tolerability, and low risk of drug-drug interactions, Lexapro is at least as useful in dealing with the housing market as some of the other solutions out there.

It's bad enough that we have buyers who can't get mortgage loans and homeowners who can't pull equity out of their homes to buy second homes. Now inflation is impacting home sales, and not in a good way.

Mortgage interest rates rise on news of inflation and are up nearly a half a point from a month ago. When inflation is higher, 10-year Treasury bond yields go up. Mortgage interest rates are influenced by long term rates.

Every one/eighth of a point translates to about $25 a month in payments, so hello to mortgage payments nearly $100 higher.

Homebuyers can add that to their budgets as they plan how to pay for goods and services that have gone up 4.2 percent since last year, while their salaries have remained flat. Four percent of those increases are just for energy and food. Meanwhile, unemployment is edging up to 5.5 percent.

They can also add on the cost of Lexapro. Due to the increased use of mood elevators, the cost of Lexapro continues to go up. Making matters worse, many HMOs refuse to cover it since so many people appear to need it.

If your insurance company doesn't cover Lexapro, you'll have to rely on other things to feel better about the housing market, like ... perspective.

Yes, housing is down, but the slow market is way out of whack with job fundamentals. You can depress yourself with forecasts that housing prices will bottom 30 to 40 percent lower than the highs of 2005. Or, you can go back in history and note that the last time prices bottomed so dramatically was during the Great Depression when 40 percent of Americans were out of work.

We're a long way from that.

In the newest UCLA Anderson forecast by Dr. Edward Leamer, he writes that "the housing market's drag on the nation's gross domestic product may prove to be "the most severe since the Great Depression," but he also says that "history suggests this cannot go on much longer."

In other words, what's down will come up again.

What makes me so confident? It's not Lexapro. It's human nature. When prices and sales are bad enough, yet people still have incomes, they'll buy houses, because it will be in their economic interest to do so.

And right now, the median house is within healthy buying range of the median income.

In 2005 at the height of the market, it took 4.2 times income to buy a home. A household income of $59,500 today can buy the median home priced at $202,300, or 3.4 times earnings.

Affordability is the treatment we need.

Published: June 19, 2008

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Blanche Evans is the award-winning senior editor of Realty Times, the Internet's leading independent real estate news service. She is featured daily on the Realty Times Video Network in the "Realty Viewpoint" segment. Blanche has been named one of the "25 Most Influential People In Real Estate" by REALTOR Magazine, and has been twice recognized as a "notable." In 2005, she was named "Top Reporter Covering the NAR" by Delahaye-Bacon's. Blanche is a renowned author of five real estate books. Her newest, Bubbles, Booms and Busts: Make Money In Any Real Estate Market, McGraw-Hill, was rave-reviewed by The New York Times. She was also selected from hundreds of real estate experts to contribute to Donald Trump's book, Trump: The Best Real Estate Advice I Ever Received: 100 Top Experts Share Their Strategies, Rutledge Hill Press, and is featured on page 68. Order Now Review - Honors In 2006, Blanche was selected among scores of candidates to author two consumer real estate guidebooks for the National Association of Realtors: The NAR Guide to Home Buying, and The NAR Guide to Home Selling, Wiley & Sons. She is currently planning two new books for the NAR and its members.       Known for her keen insight into real estate industry issues and for her ability to make complex subjects easy to understand, Blanche is a sought-after keynote and continuing education speaker. Real estate organizations from MLSs, to brokerages, to franchisors, to associations hire her to provide up-to-the-minute analysis of real estate industry news and advice on how to improve revenues. Her passionate delivery, peppered with stinging wit, is a huge hit with audiences and fans. Don Klein, CEO Greater Nashville Association of Realtors, Blanche Evans, Richard Courtney, president 2007, GRAR "The GNAR membership meeting last week featured Blanche Evans as the keynote speaker. Her comments and insights resonated extremely well with those in attendance and we have had many requests for copies of her PowerPoint Presentation. She was a terrific part of the membership meeting and convention program!" - Don Klein, CEO Greater Nashville Association of Realtors Coverage from WSMV, Nashville - 8-14-2007 That Interview Guy - Get Inside The Head Of Today's Generation 2007 AE Institute Session - To purchase 2006 AE Institute Session - Parts 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 HouseValues Mastermind call - Parts 1 2 Blanche's fireside chat with Jeremy Conaway, HAR - Click here. To contact Blanche, email her at . For more articles by Blanche, click here.