He must be. Wachovia cannot possibly be paying a chief economist enough who can look in the mortgage lending mess and declare that, “Things should stop getting worse around the middle of this year.”

There is no way to know that, not with two fundamentals of a market — price and risk — in flux. We can hope that Vitner is correct, but there is no data to support that. As we’ve noted, Charlotte is late to this correction. If it follows the pattern of other markets, the slow down in building activity of the past quarter or so will be followed by several quarters of flat to falling prices as the market rebalances. It may not be until this time next year that we completely hit bottom. No one knows.

Then again, recall that Vitner also believes that Uptown Charlotte will hit the 100,000 jobs target required to make CATS’ $9 billion transit plan work. Not a lot of reason to think that will happen either.