Regardless of the real reasons for the housing bubble, I used to do contracting for quite a few flippers down in San Diego. They were well-aware that it was a b

Regardless of the real reasons for the housing bubble, I used to do contracting for quite a few flippers down in San Diego. They were well-aware that it was a bubble and were exploiting it to the fullest extent they could get away with. The funny part is that every single person on the ground, from the flippers to the guy sweeping trash knew exactly what was happening. No one hid the fact that you could buy a dingy house for 200k, put in 50k of work, sit on it, and sell it for 400k. There was a lot of other interesting types of people as well. I was aware of a company who flipped, but their entire strategy was to move nice furniture into the place to make it "feel" more expensive. Aside from paying day laborers to move the furniture, they didn't spend any money. It was a perfect storm of people moving across country, free money, and people willing to exploit the situation. The silly part was that there was a mini-pop around the year 2000, and everyone knew history would repeat itself. It was a mad rush to get it while it was good. I know all of that is ignoring the toxic bank loans (which the flippers took advantage of as well), but just my experience and observation.