•  Foreign reserves: In recent years, monetary policy was focussed on protecting foreign reserves. Foreign reserves levels are holding up well at around $ million. Current levels are sufficient to cover close to 4 months of imports of goods. This is a comfortable level.
Existing home prices (as measured by the repeat-sales index) rose by 7 percent during 2002, and by a third during the past four years. Such a pace cannot reasonably be expected to be maintained. And recently, price increases have clearly slowed. It is, of course, possible for home prices to fall as they did in a couple of quarters in 1990.