The cooling off of the regional housing market can be attributed to a combination of job losses related to the airport, rising interest rates, infrastructure problems and growth control initiatives.

The data are consistent with very gradual cooling in the housing market.

The Fed has been singularly unsuccessful in cooling down the hot U.S. housing market, primarily because its rate hikes have had little impact on long-term interest rates — so far,

I'm not a housing market expert, and I don't want to pretend to be one.

The cooling U.S. housing sector should apply a dampener to consumer spending as 2005-2006 unfolds, but some of this could be offset by still-decent job growth.

In hindsight, that regional championship made a lot of those losses easier to stomach. I was happy with how we progressed, and I'm excited about who is coming back and what we have coming up (from the lower levels).