When and where is the bottom in housing?

We are all interested in as to when this housing crisis will bottom out. I was reading today this article "Has Housing bottomed? Here's how to tell" on  OfTwominds.com blog by Charles Hugh Smith, whose website I frequent regularly. His ideas are insightful and thought provoking (clicking on the title of this blog entry will take you to the article.) We have been among those who wanted to buy our first house, but so far never mustered the courage to buy. Though  we have been living in US for more than 12 years, we have always found more reasons not to buy. Probably the strongest reason might be that we have been living in Bay area, where the housing is one of the most expensive in the country. Experts say that you have to have at least 20% down payment before you can think of buying. You also read you should have 6 months of living expenditure in your savings.

One of my friends said that there is no point in calculating how much your house is worth, as long as you are living in it. It is of use only when you try selling it because of upgrading or downgrading or moving out of the State/Country. We always thought that we should buy a house because we would want to live in it. We do not know when we will buy a house, but recently once again decided that we still are not ready to buy as yet, not because the housing is still not affordable, but because it gives us freedom and mobility.