How to get a great headline? Predict housing prices falling by 30%!

I have to hand it to the PR folks over at Moody's Economy.com, because Mark Zandi has become a true king of the press quote. Now they're predicting a 12% decline in overall prices from peak to trough by early 2009 (over 15% when concessions/incentives are factored in), with even larger declines in places like Stockton (over 30%).

Want to read the report yourself? You can buy it for the low, low price of $3,995!

Generally, such press releases include some more detail on specific areas, but not this time (I'm hoping it magically appears somewhere in the Internet once it's released, or that they provide some summary tables so we can compare different metro areas).

It also doesn't discuss their methodologies; I don't think we should have to pay $4k for a report just to see whether or not their calculations make sense. And frankly, I wish reporters would delve a little deeper in these methodologies before running a headline that's only going to further fuel the politically motivated 'solutions' to this issue.

I'm hoping for some objective analysis by someone who doesn't work at Moody's once the report has been released.