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I'm not sure what everyone considers low real estate prices.

Here, houses are way high.  I see 300K+ houses that are no way worth that much.  You can also look up on the county tax site what they were bought for.  I'm often seeing land that sold for 68K now trying to be sold for 150K.  Also, houses that were bought for 100K on the market for 250K.  I'm not sure if these folks have gotten extra mortgages or what on this and are trying to break even?

You are correct OP.  A correction seems to be needed.

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Wow for a guy in it you don't seem to read much. Try the wsj some time
You will realize how off you are.

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The only thing that is sustaining current real estate prices is credit offered by debt-peddlers.

Even in the rural, middle-of-nowhere areas, real estate is still way too high. No jobs, no funding and the only way to get something - anything - is to borrow so much that you are in debt for the rest of your life. That's the SOP.  $150K for a house in rural Kentucky/WV/etc.  With no jobs anywhere? Not even min-wage?  Places where $10/hour Home Depot jobs are considered "good jobs".

The second wave of RE collapse will come when all credit becomes unavailable and the housing prices adjust to the min-wage wages or lack thereof in the boonies. The only thing that's keeping this high is credit.

We will have a RE collapse. We *need* a RE collapse to come back to reality.  140K in rural TX is not viable.

Current prices are just absurd. Especially in the context of the current economic collapse. Jobs are hard to find with dozens of applicants even for janitor positions. Even min-wage jobs has become unobtanium in rural areas. You can only get a job if "you know someone". A janitor job opens up and 12 people show up to apply, what does that tell you?

Here in the District of Corruption, it's even worse. No crash here and prices are just in the stratosphere. $650K for a house. You can sometimes get defaults but even these are way too high.  

I work in IT and they used to get 200-300 applicants per opening 10 years ago, now it's more like 800 people applying for same job. Granted 90% of them are BS candidates with terrible /off-topic resumes but the remaining 10% are still dozens of very strong candidates.

Point is, people have no money and keep financing their lifestyle with credit. That means from food to gas to real estate. It's a narcotic and will soon disappear and then we shall know the meaning of crash. They can extend it but not indefinitely.

Then if you still got the coin - and that's a big "if" - you can buy anything. If the hyperinflation does not wipe out the currency.

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Meh. Bought my place this year for $200,000 less than the owner paid and got a historically low rate.

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Friend of mine father, bought a lot for 200k in 1970's, he just sold the lot for over 6 million and this is zoned for a house. OP i hear you, but the one thing people never ever ever ever ever understand with real estate is to NEVER sell untill you really want to... real estate prices always go up no matter what over time, whether its from inflation or demand.

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easiest way to fix it make the banks responsible for maintaining and property tax on every foreclosed home on the books make the house a liability not an asset to sit on.   prices will normalize in a week.

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Jesus, some people live in fear of their own shadow. Make good choices, don't buy shit you can't afford, take personal responsibility and don't take stupid fucking deals.

Not blowing your wad on loans you can't afford isn't fucking rocket science.

The first collapse was caused by people getting loans they couldn't afford. Predatory lending can't happen if people aren't fucking morons.

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Jesus, some people live in fear of their own shadow. Make good choices, don't buy shit you can't afford, take personal responsibility and don't take stupid fucking deals.

Not blowing your wad on loans you can't afford isn't fucking rocket science.

The first collapse was caused by people getting loans they couldn't afford. Predatory lending can't happen if people aren't fucking morons.

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If you seriously believed in the hyperinflation scenario, you too would be addicted to credit.  I know I'd be leveraging all I could to buy as much as I could.

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We are in the damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. The RE situation is just icing on the cake.

The economy runs on credit, debt - called Quantative Easing part X but it just means running the printing press and adding zeros on the computer screen. This leads to higher national debt, deficit, interest payments, and inflation. The end game is currency collapse with a postage stamp costing $10,000. The current debt of 17T can never be repaid - no plans to repay, it's not economically feasible. Even if the fed gov shut down every program, they still could not repay it. The debt is a run away train and the gov just hits the gas pedal. The end game is hyperinflation.  There is no other outcome possible.  That's what happens when there is just too much "money", or Notes printed.
The US had several hyperinflations already. First during the revolutionary war, the Continental currency went to zero. During the Civil war, the Southern currency was almost completely devalued. So it's not like a hyperinflation is a thing that never happened before.

Every president and Congress thinks short term. Everyone adds to the debt, bails out today, but tomorrow is coming. It's like getting another CC to pay off the first credit card ad infinitum.

So with the option of endless QE, wearing out the printing press, "Too big to fail". And much demagoguery about the subject, everyone who does not want to raise the debt limit and print "Notes" forever is the enemy of the people and a Republican. The current path leads to a hyperinflationary depression.  Hyperinflation causes social political instability and usually brings down the government. e.g. The Continental brought down the Confederation of 1777 and led to creation of the US by the Constitutional Convention. The tsarist government collapsed in 1917 when the ruble was destroyed, etc. etc. etc.

The second option is to reduce the debt, stop printing money, stop borrowing, cut social programs.  That might fix thing very long-term but short term too will lead to a depression, more like a huge contraction in business because everything runs on debt, credit and funding. If they seriously reduced the debt, we would be a in a depression far worse than the Great Depression. Which is why nobody wants to do it, it's not possible.

so no matter what they do, we are screwed and well past the point of no return. Hyperinflationary depresson or a deflationary collapse. some choice. Does not take a genius to see which path they have chosen. Hint: Not the deflationary pay-off-the-debt one.

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I like these threads

With interest rate still low, home prices go up.  We need inflation to change the interest rates.  Unfortunately the CPI is officially useless when FBHO removed the gas and food prices

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I must be living in a bubble. Real Estate prices in the Tulsa area are still down.

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Oh, and before you give me the negative comments of living in fear.  I make a very good living off of real estate whether it is going up (representing builders) or down (bankruptcy work).  So I will win in either scenario.  But you cannot fool math, so anyone who disagrees with me please include some numbers instead of statements like "the market is different now" or "we are in a new paradigm" or "fundamentals have changed."

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On the west coast you have Asian investors buying RE, keeping inventory low and prices high.

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I don't know.  My house, purchased in 2006, cost me $260k.  It's worth between $160-175k now.