The Jan. 5, 1908 NYT reports on the real estate market in New York City for 1907:

The year's developments, it is true, have not been uniformly of an encouraging character. There have been foreclosures and there probably will be more. There have been readjustments between borrowers and lenders by direct transfer, without the formality of foreclosure, and there have been a few failures, but when one stops to consider what might have been expected as the results of two years of most remarkable building activity, speculation and inflation, followed by a period of intense money stringency - when one reflects upon the possibilities of such a chain of events and then looks over the actual results the real estate community has every reason to face the future with confidence, if not with elation.

The story goes on to describe the building activity in 1907 compared to 1906 and 1905 - it was considerably lower. The then suggests that the slowdown in construction should not be viewed as a negative pre se as the demand for new housing in New York has been slowing down over the same time period. The story then suggests that the construction of housing units will likely pick up again after the completion of a number of skyscrapers currently (in 1908) under construction; the paper suggests that once the new office buildings are completed, more firms will want to locate in New York City, which will, in turn, encourage more people to relocate in the city, at which time the construction of new residential housing will commence.

It is not exactly the same as the national housing issues of 2007, but it seems darn close. In other words, the apocryphal predictions of a worse-than-1929-depression being just one or two quarters away would seem to overstate things. Markets are very resilient, as long as government doesn't screw things up too much, and the 2007 housing market might simply be a historical footnote in one years much as the 1907 housing crisis is today.