So you've got your home on the market? Sorry to hear that.

You've probably already spruced up and "staged," you've lit candles that smell like chocolate chip cookies and buried St. Joseph in the backyard. Maybe you have even changed Realtors, or switched from for-sale-by-owner to Realtor or vice versa.

Here's one more suggestion: Sign up for e-mail alerts that tell you when another home in your category goes up for sale. You will find out immediately who your competition is and how much they are asking.

On our Web site, SearchChicago-Homes (www. searchchicago.com/homes), all you have to do is create an e-mail account. Then click on "search" to create a customized search that roughly matches the criteria you would use to define your own house. Click "search" then "save search." The last thing you are asked is how often you want to receive an e-mail with results.

For example, let's say you are listing your 2-bedroom Lakeview condo for $299,990. Customize your search for 2-bedroom condos in Lakeview priced between $250,000 and $350,000. You might also decide not to put in a price range and/or create other searches for nearby neighborhoods. Then, let the system go to work snooping out your competition.

Though e-mail alerts in general can drive a person bananas, these might be reassuring. Maybe what you will find out is that you are priced right, and that your property looks great next to the other guy.

A number of industry watchers and analysts have been predicting that Chicago housing prices have farther to fall. But Matthew Hougan, a blogger and senior editor of the Journal of Indexes who watches the futures market, suggests that of the top 10 metropolitan areas watched by Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller index, only one does not have a predicted loss in average housing prices over the next four years: Chicago.

In fact, the S&P futures market suggests that Chicago home prices will be absolutely flat for four years -- no gain, no loss. Compared to losses of more than 17 percent in Los Angeles, 12 percent in Denver and 15 percent in Washington D.C., Chicago prices look almost peachy.

Hougan goes on to despair that in all those other cities, homeowners stand to lose vast amounts of their down payment.

I have a problem with that logic, even though, as an investment -- on paper -- it looks like a loss.

Housing is different than every other investment out there -- it's an investment and a place to live. You have to live somewhere, and almost everyone has to pay to live somewhere. If you aren't making a house payment, you're renting. And rent payments are a 100 percent loss.

Let's say that Hougan's prediction, based on the S&P index, is correct, and Chicago prices stay flat for four years. If you are making mortgage payments, you still will own a greater portion of your home in four years than you do now. If you rent, you own nothing after four years. If the payments are the same, owning puts you ahead. Sometimes mortgage payments are higher than rent, but rents can go up annually, whereas a fixed rate mortgage does not. Property taxes do, though. Either way you have a bit of a guessing game going on.

However, you could look at your home as your nest, your shelter, your project, your monument to yourself, your whatever.

And if it makes you money, you're ahead. If not, you still have the whatever.