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The problem is that investors are buying up property and realty companies are raising prices because houses are selling. Atleast thats whats happening around my area.

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Southern Utah is a prime example of this.

I am in an area large enough to where we're not considered a small town, but having lived in a city before this, its still very small. When we moved here for a job my wife was offered, I noticed something very quickly; if you do not have one of the handful of higher paying jobs with the city/state/BLM or at the hospital here (#1 employer) your choice of work is between Walmart, the AT&T store, Lowes, or one of the 200 other shit employers in town that are comprised of 99% fast food, kiosks and strip mall stores where you make $9. There is one small office park in town with a few smaller businesses that have a handful of employees and that is it. If you live here and work, you either somehow work from home, work for the state/city or the hospital and that's it - the median family income is right around $42k a year.

Yet there is a subdivision of completely overpriced $1M+ housing being built and droves of $500k+ homes on the market. Other than lower end homes, which are pushed to 1 side of town, my wife and I have had no idea how people afford these homes and where do they all work? Part of that was answered when we learned that roughly a year before we moved here, it was a popular place for retired Californians to move to. We got a better understanding of what happens by someone she works with who actually sold their house to one of these people; they came by, looked at the house and offered more than they were going to list for. Shortly thereafter, all of the idiots on the block now thought their house was also worth much more and listed it. This then has a snowballing affect and with the help of the useless local realtors, caught on on all sides of town.

Just for the hell of it we toured one of these $1M dollar houses up on the hill. When they showed us the house, it was a decent house with nice upgrades...on a hill. That's it. They took a regular house, put it on a hill and hit it with a premium of 800% or something. It was to the point that I would never be able to tell anyone what I paid for it as they'd look at me and wonder why I was such a retard for paying that much money and getting this in return. This is how my wife and I have felt about 90% of the areas and houses we've seen; we wouldn't be able to tell our parents the price of them and not feel like we'd be about to get scolded.

My wife and I started looking and touring houses 8 months ago. Right off the bat, from the prices of the houses to what you were getting especially given this was a small area, we thought people were out of their minds. If it was priced at $600k, I'd think it was in the $250k-$300 range. My wife and I started playing a game where when we got a listing we'd hide the price, look at the listing and then guess what it was worth - we'd always be 200-300k low. But as usual, were always told that 'this is how it is' yet refused to buy into it and we are glad we didn't. Of the 22 houses we've looked at over that time period, they all have 1 thing in common - they're all still for sale. One example is a house listed at over $700k that magically listed the first time over a year ago when some idiot overpaid for a house on their street to only be de-listed and then re-listed again. It's slowly gone from $700k, to $650k, to $629k, to $605k and will keep going down until the actual value of around $500k appears. Yet all of these people swear their house is worth this....because of the market! What market? All of your houses are overpriced, no one is looking at them, you drop the price and nothing changes. It's ALL coming down.

I already see the idiot spec neighborhoods that developers have sat on way too long already starting to cease construction locally.

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Meh, raw land and town lot prices stayed steady in my area even after the collapse.  

In NOVA builders would come in and buy a older home on a large lot (usually a corner lot) for basically the price of the lot, tear it down, and build a Mc Mansion on it.

As housing prices went back up and the practice was more costly it left a lot of weird looking neighborhoods with mix of 50 year old ranchers and new Mc Mansions.

Add to that recent Hispanic immigrants have been buying/renting the ranchers so Mr & Mrs Mc Mansion's lives are not going as they hoped.

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I'm still waiting for the commercial RE meltdown...I'm sure it's gonna come and be a titanic event

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Real estate prices are nothe high.  Rather,  the dollar is worthless.

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I was watching one of these "flip the house" programs yesterday.  In Hawthorne California there was a $700K house on a busy street that was about 1400 ft2.  To me it wasn't worth more than $150K and that was after it was renovated.  Bloated market.

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I own a shit load of shit and I carry a shit-ton of paper.  I don’t give a fuck.

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im 20, been trying to move out for 2 years now. market sucks, i mean i make a decent salary but i still can't afford shit
plus no one will give me a loan even though i have great credit

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I own page 4

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The banks were NEVER motivated to sell properties even when they were foreclosures or at risk of foreclosure through short-sales, because they all got bailed out. With ZERO motivation to sell they didn't have to really drop prices or do anything to accommodate buyers.  When we purchased our home in 2009 most of the foreclosures demanded either straight cash or that you were financed through them or a private loan rather than government VA loan.  The banks didn't want to maintain the properties at all or bring them into conformity with all the requirements of the government backed loans and they had zero motivation to do so. In other words, the banks were all too happy to take the government bailouts, but were telling buyers with government backed VA loans to go #$%@ themselves. When it came to short-sales they were sitting on those short-sale approvals for MONTHS sometimes.  

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im 20, been trying to move out for 2 years now. market sucks, i mean i make a decent salary but i still can't afford shit
plus no one will give me a loan even though i have great credit