Bubbles happen in many more things than just housing. It just happened to hit way more people than any of the previous bubbles. I don't know much about the mar

Bubbles happen in many more things than just housing. It just happened to hit way more people than any of the previous bubbles. I don't know much about the market conditions outside of SoCal, but here the housing seems to have recovered to 2005-2006 levels. It doesn't look like it has much fuel to go up for a long time, but those who bought 2009-2012 are definitely comfortably in the black. Some could be up as much as 50-60% from especially distressed properties. Doesn't sound bad to me... Factor in ridiculously cheap borrowing costs (even a couple months ago, there were 30 yr. mortgages for around 4%), and you have pretty decent investment opportunities. In an unbalanced market, one can always find ways to realize short-term gain. Trick is to not get suckered in and overplay the hand.