Houses are homes, not investments

While you're still better off building equity instead of paying rent (and deducting mortgage interest from your taxes), my friend at 28th Avenue notes that the housing market isn't the greatest right now.

The big thing: don't expect a lot of value appreciation in your home in the next couple years. 28th links to Calculated Risk, which quotes Fed Chair Bernanke:

To the downside, the correction in the housing market could turn out to be more severe than we currently expect, perhaps exacerbated by problems in the subprime sector. Moreover, we could yet see greater spillover from the weakness in housing to employment and consumer spending than has occurred thus far.

Update 4/12: Check out the comments from EKM, where he links to an amazing tool posted by the New York Times for calculating whether it's better to rent or buy in your particular area.

How accurate is that forecast?

A longstanding question finally answered by the Omninerd! Tracking 10 online weather sources for two months, the Omninerd tells you which weather service is most likely to get your forecast right. Tables 6 and 7 are probably the most useful.