Robert Knakal, the chairman of investment-sales brokerage Massey Knakal, wrote in his March "Message from the Chairman" that the volume of property and property-portfolio sales in New York will drop "approximately 20% in 2008."

Why?

"... 2007 will be remembered as the year we started to pay for the Fed keeping interest rates too low for too long."

I wrote in January about how New York real estate investors--and ordinary homebuyers--went hog wild on such low rates. Money was cheap and no one seemed to fret any adjustments.