Ways to cope despite real estate's dire outlook

If you'd asked housing economist David Seiders at this time last year to forecast the real estate industry's future, he would have told you to expect "a recovery year" in 2008.
"That outlook has been cut dramatically from what I was saying a year ago," Seiders, chief economist for the National Association of Home Builders, concedes. He's slashed his projection for home construction by 35% and says 2008 will be "another down year"