It would be nice to start the day with good news

I subscribe to many feeds from professionals in the Mortgage business.

I got one this morning from Todd Ballenger at www.kendalltodd.com discussing the latest report from The office of Federal Housing Oversight FY 2006 Performance Plan and information from a number of other sources. One of the sources was the latest data from the National Association of Realtors quoting their Housing Affordability Index

Usually the information in these reports are technical (these are no different) but there is a section that Todd says, "The housing affordability index from the NAR showed a big drop, less than 50% of American's now have income necessary to afford a house at the $221.900 average entry point level."

Can someone please help me out here.  Is the apparent problem the "low level of income" or the "average entry point level"?

Wouldn't the numbers look different if we just lowered the expectation of what the "entry point level" is?

Why is the bad news the level of income we have instead of the price we want to pay for our first house?

I look forward to better news for all of us tomorrow morning.

Alex

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