ESTATE _,   SATURDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1978  
The possibility of a national economic downturn in 1979 is raising the inevitable, sobering question-for real estate here: what happens to WashingtonÛªs booming market if the U.S. slides into a recession next year?</br></br>Some of WashingtonÛªs property values have been rising 20 percent a year for the past five years. If consumersÛª real incomes decline, or their appetite for new debt falls sharply, what will happen to those inflation-fed market values?</br></br>Earlier this week, President Carter affirmed what many economists have been saying for months: the country cannot take prolonged inflation of the current level without bringing on the threat of a decline in real economic growth. Business Week magazine, in a recent special report, examined the disturbing parallels between America's unrestrained "debt economyÛ and the conditions prevailing just before the 1974-75 recession, the worst the country had experienced in four decades.</br></br>Assuming that the soothsayers could be right, and the nation is heading into a period of economic retreat, must this necessarily dampen this' areaÛªs real estate</br></br>President CarterÛªs program for voluntary wage-price guidelines may encounter difficulty in the nationÛªs new housing market because of the fast-rising prices of land and key materials.