The U.S. real estate market continues its freefall as the nation enters its first possible full-blown economic recession since the late 1980s and early 1990s.

For prospective home buyers, the Web offers manyways to find foreclosed homeswhose sale prices may be quite low. For example, ForeclosureRadar.com tracks all foreclosure listings in the state of California, and ForeclosureData.com offers a free nationwide search.

Businesses should keep a close eye on the progress of the U.S. housing market. As the ability of homeowners to make mortgage payments or sell their homes ebbs and flows, so do the collective capacities of companies to hold their interests and sell them products.

Of course, publishers and agents looking to educate people about foreclosures and avoiding them now have a golden opportunity in their hands.

The Web has never been a better place to be. While we ought to be careful about the risks associated with online content (it's always good to double-check its accuracy by looking at a variety of sources), there never has been a time in human history when information and knowledge were so easy to access and share.

I believe the Internet will have a signficant impact on the housing market, and vice versa. This interaction would not have been possible 15 or 20 years ago, and would have been quite slow and binary 5-10 years ago. Now we are witnessing the "YouTube" revolution and the eruption of the blogosphere and "Web 2.0" - a wave of self-publishing on the Web and collaborative communication. There's no telling where it all will lead, but keep a close eye on the U.S. housing market - it forms an important part of the health of the economy, and therefore affects the Web deeply as well.