Quote of the day: How low can you go?

“It’s almost like a limbo pole that’s almost on the ground and can’t go any lower. This is about it.”

– Real-estate consultant Tracy Cross, on reports of the biggest quarterly drop in new home sales in more than two years.

Builders in the Chicago area sold 2,196 units in the fourth quarter of 2007, a 51-percent decline from Q4 2006, but Cross expects a market recovery in the second half of 2008 and predicts a 12-percent increase in home sales for the year, according to Crain’s.