This could come in handy when the day of reckoning, as some put it, hits Toronto.

Paul Krugman, Aug. 12: Safe as houses

The housing boom has created jobs in two ways. Many jobs have been created, directly and indirectly, by a surge in housing construction. And rising home values have fueled a simultaneous surge in consumer spending. ...

So it's an economy driven by real estate. What's wrong with that?

One answer is that it has been a pretty disappointing recovery. Two new reports, one from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and one from the Congressional Budget Office, compare the current economic expansion with other postwar recoveries. By any measure except corporate profits, which have done very well, this one comes up short.

Even the good months would have been considered subpar in the past: the administration hailed last month's job growth as something wondrous to behold, yet there were 68 months during the Clinton years when employment grew faster.

Still, the economy is expanding. But because that expansion depends so much on real estate - without the housing boom, the economic picture would look dismal indeed - you have to wonder how much to trust it.

I've written before about the reasons to believe that current house prices in much of the country represent a bubble. When that bubble begins to deflate, so will housing-related employment.

Aug. 13: Assess your area's real estate bubble

Though it appears the shift is now at hand, the end of the bubble will not look anything like the crash in the stock market after the technology bubble. The stock market turns frenetic when investors scramble to get out and prices fall sharply. In housing, however, a collapse is signaled by a sharp drop in activity as people hold off buying. Houses stay on the market longer. Inventories grow. Only then will prices fall, slowly. Economists say prices will lag a slowdown in the market by four to six months.

Some of the data on where a local market is headed is available on the Internet (links are at nytimes.com/business). In other cases, your real estate agent is your best friend. He or she has access to a storehouse of raw data from the local Multiple Listing Service. Here are some indicators to look at:

Market Activity

How many homes are sold compared with the month before is the earliest indicator, but it is notorious for false positives. But if the number of homes sold starts to drop, perk up. Every county tracks this and makes it available to the public.

Inventory

Some of the most crucial pieces of information are held closely by real estate agents. The number of houses on the market is one of them. The national average is 4.3 months; 6 months is closer to normal, the National Association of Realtors says. When it grows, there is trouble coming. Time on the market Agents control access to this information, and be warned: they know how to manipulate it. A house that has been languishing can be taken off and put back to look like a fresh listing. But you'll still be able to see the average time stretching as a clear signal of cooling.

Prices

It's what you care about most. But month-to-month comparisons are nearly useless as an indicator because sales of a few houses on either end of the market can skew the figures. DataQuick at www.dqnews.com has some data and the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight issues quarterly reports.

Failed to Sell

The super-secret indicator among agents is the number of houses that are quietly taken off the market - usually because they are priced too high. Wheedle the number out of them and you'll have a strong indicator of market health.

Price-to-Rent Ratio

This is a wonderful measure that gets at the intrinsic value of a property, but it's a tricky tool for the layman. Rent data include everything from studios to four-bedroom penthouses, making a comparison with single-family homes difficult. Some of the rent data can be found at www.realfacts.com.

Loan quality

The popularity of interest-only mortgages could become one of the best indicators of a fragile market, several economists say. Mr. Thornberg of UCLA Anderson says it's a sign that lenders are scraping the bottom of the barrel. "We are close to running out of shills," he says.

Risk The PMI Group of Walnut Creek, Calif., a provider of data to the mortgage industry, estimates how much prices could drop using an econometric model. It publishes the list of at-risk cities at www.pmigroup.com.

Popular sentiment

To judge from the media, the housing bubble may have peaked in June. According to a Nexis search of magazines and newspapers, that month was the peak, with 312 references to "housing bubble," almost six times that of a year earlier. It fell 24 percent in July.

Of course, there is one constant: real estate agent sentiment. Most of them will never tire of saying it's a great time to buy. Despite the signs of a slowdown, Mr. Martone, the Providence real estate agent, says prices are holding and he still does not have enough properties to sell. He says, "I am the eternal optimist."