Where i live (Austin TX), I would have upgraded to a bigger house from my first if they had actually gone down in value. That was actually my plan and part of t

Where i live (Austin TX), I would have upgraded to a bigger house from my first if they had actually gone down in value. That was actually my plan and part of the reason I bought a cheap house in ~2005. But, the federal government stepped in too soon and made it clear to the banks that they were going to support the market. So outside of a few obviously overspeculated markets a lot of places just stopped going up in value, they never went down or if they did it was single digits. I placed multiple offers on foreclosed houses (as did a few other people I know) none of us got them because the banks refused to sell them for less than the previous mortgage amount. They let houses sit vacant for 2-3 years until the market was basically recovered in ~2011. One of the ones I bid on, was listed for X, I bid that, was the only bidder and 6 months later the bank counter offered for X + 25%. So, individuals got screwed on both sides, the people who lost their house, and the "savers" who were denied the deals they were waiting for. (edit: Just to add to this, basically in auction terms the banks all set a hidden reserve price equal to the previous max while simultaneously listing them for far less than the reserve. It create an optical illusion of the housing market being cheap and full of unsold houses, while people who were actually underwater felt trapped because they would have to take a hit selling the house, and people trying to buy houses couldn't actually buy any without buying the "overpriced" ones being sold by actual individuals. A few people got lucky and bought at below market rates from individuals who had owned them long enough to be able to afford to sell at these lower prices, but those were pretty competitive even during the slowest part of the market. I was regularly outbid (I think it was something like 12 times), despite bidding over listing on them.)