Amidst all the bad news that has been going on, we finally got the good news I had been waiting for.  As I have been saying, inflation and interest rates are the two key components that I will keep an eye on in going forward in being able to develop a better picture of where our real estate market is headed.  We had wage increases of around 6% earlier this year, but the inflation rate was 5.9%, effectively giving us a no-growth situation.  This was a concern reflected by Paul Brewbaker earlier this year at the HDC Midyear Review. 

Now we see, the inflation rate slowed for the first half of 2007.  Definitely good news, but numbers that are definitely too soon to make judgements on.  This will hopefully help us maintain the stability we are seein gin the marketplace.