The "impending train wreck" in housing prices is not going to materialize. So claims Anthony Chan, Economist at JPMorgan Asset Management. There are several things supporting housing prices, and they aren't changing any time soon.

First of all, Long Rates are averaging 6% in this economic cycle, compared to an average of 11% over past finanacial cycles. This alone is very supportive of current price levels, and he finds it improbable that long rates will back up in the kind of dramatic fashion needed for a collapse in housing prices.

Second, despite many claims to the contrary, the level of home sales is not dramatically different from levels in previous cycles:

On a related front, we also examined the path of new home sales growth during the current expansion and compared this trajectory with the average performance over the last four expansions. Our results show that while the cumulative growth in new home sales has been a bit more impressive in the current cycle, its path has already begun to moderate and move closer to its historical norm.

This seems to fly in the face of the majority of the analysis out there... which means there just might be something to it!