.bodytext {float: left; } .floatimg-left-hort { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right: 10px; width:300px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-caption-hort { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:300px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-vert { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right:15px; width:200px;} .floatimg-left-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; font-size: 10px; width:200px;} .floatimg-right-hort { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px;} .floatimg-right-caption-hort { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimg-right-vert { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px;} .floatimg-right-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; border-top-style: double; border-top-color: black; border-bottom-style: double; border-bottom-color: black;} .floatimgright-sidebar p { line-height: 115%; text-indent: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar h4 { font-variant:small-caps; } .pullquote { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 150px; background: url(http://www.dmbusinessdaily.com/DAILY/editorial/extras/closequote.gif) no-repeat bottom right !important ; line-height: 150%; font-size: 125%; border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} .floatvidleft { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatvidright { float:right; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} You know how nothing ever turns out quite the way it was predicted? Like the weather, or your major league baseball career? That seems to be our main reason for economic hope heading into 2008. We have to assume that the experts will be wrong.

The most optimistic of them, those who walk in sunshine all day long and hear glorious music, not voices, in their heads, are saying we won’t experience a recession. Just a cold, gray slowdown, sort of like driving through fog for 12 months with a headache. Remember, that’s the bright side.

The gloomy ones foresee an era when urban sidewalks will become clogged with owner-occupied cardboard boxes.

So I went looking for some good news, something that will give us some reason to expect the United States to stay in one piece. And I found it. Here you go:

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population of this nation increases by one person every 13 seconds.

That’s it. That’s our hope for the future.

You get it, don’t you? This statistic means that America’s demand for homes – and cars, clothes, video games and microwave ovens – just keeps growing every minute.

According to the Census Bureau’s calculations, the population of the United States increased by more than 2.8 million people in 2007.

I know infants rarely buy houses, but the point is, a steadily growing population is a customer factory. A lot of people arrived on the scene 20 and 25 years ago, too, and although a few of them might spend their nights in airports pretending to wait for a delayed flight, the rest need stuff and a place to keep it.

It’s like what the Hubbell Realty folks said last year about investing in Florida, even while the housing market down there was struggling like a flamingo in a hurricane: “There are more people living in Florida today than there were yesterday.”

Those people do have plenty of houses to choose from today. And so do newcomers to Southern California, Las Vegas and, for that matter, Cleveland.

The Census Bureau said there were nearly 2.1 million vacant homes for sale in the third quarter of 2007, which is 2.6 percent of owner-occupied homes. But keep it in perspective; back in the days before our housing industry checked into rehab, the vacancy rate was about 1.7 percent. And according to McVean Trading & Investments LLC, “more than half of recent foreclosures are on second homes and investor-owned properties, not primary residences.”

Here in Greater Des Moines, the foreclosure situation gets just a bit worse every year. Kelly Michael, a program specialist at the Polk County sheriff’s office, said she received 1,562 orders to sell foreclosed houses at auction in 2007. That was up from 1,222 in 2006.

The average home sale price here dropped 1.4 percent last fall, as did the number of sales.

But that’s nothing. “Housing markets from Punta Gorda, Fla., to Stockton, Calif., will crash and suffer price drops of more than 30 percent before the housing crisis is over, a report from Moody’s Economy.com said,” according to a recent Reuters story.

The overall drop in home values is expected to be about 35 percent in Punta Gorda and 32 percent in Stockton. They represent the worst of times, but the Moody’s report also noted that about 80 of the nation’s 381 metropolitan areas will suffer a price decline in the double-digit percentages.

Eventually we’ll catch up. Some experts say we won’t be back to normal until 2010, a far-off era when we’ll be disgusted with an entirely different president, but remember our theory about experts never being exactly right.

For comfort, listen to the people who assume anything that isn’t clearly a hungry tiger is most likely a lovable kitten. A San Francisco-area blogger notes that even though U.S. foreclosures were up 68 percent in November compared with a year earlier, they were down 10 percent from October. She suspects the worst is over. It should be noted that she’s a real estate agent.

Or, for some museum-quality optimism, try the California real estate agent who says on the Web: “Ever considered investing in the foreclosure market but don’t know how to do it? I do and I can help you! … 2008 is going to be GREAT!”

Try to think like that.