re:If there a big pop in the real estate bubble,isn't it very possible for the banks to lose tons of money if foreclosures occur,especially if the home prices drop to a price that is lower than the amount of debt owed to them on each home Most mortgage debt is sold on the secondary market with the largest buyers being Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The rest of the investors are made up of large pension funds, insurance companies, large commercial banks, and other global institutions. Some large commercial and mortgage banks hold some paper but the majority is sold. Many of these institutions offset their risk by hedging....
http://remax.realtor.com/FindNeig/NeigDetail.asp?detzp=33414&x=4&y=9&gate=remax&poe=realtor my zipcode: 33414 median home price 401k median wage for 80% is 51k combined for each household the highest 4% of this area only makes 67k as a median
the stats regrading salary on almost all real estate cites are usually over 5 years old. (Because they came from the 2000 census) You also have to question the accuracy of the census as they probably only surveyed homeowners who live there full time.
As far as full time residents, this is one area with a very small retiree community. There are a lot of horse farms that are way up in the millions, but these mcmansion communities are blooming up everywhere. Just down the street from me 4 weeks ago or so, in what is about a half million dollar home a guy murdered his wife and son talking about being under stress from his wife for having to get a job as a car salesman to make ends meet rather than his preferred job of working for the Sherriff's dept. Yikes. I read an article in Barron's just over a month ago that mentioned something to the effect of how housing bubbles are the only time you don't mind bad elements moving into your neighborhood. Well. Every month about 7 or 8 homes in my hundred home gated community get flipped and the elements have a very ghetto-feel. I'm currently renting after selling my condo, and taking a wait and see attitude seeing if I don't mind living that far from the beach, but a bit away from the old people (that's nice, since I work with them constantly)- but what is amazing is how bent people get when I tell them I'm seeing if there's a bubble or not... to quote my wife's former teacher friends... "Just by man... you gotta buy... it's not gonna stop... it's just going to keep going... buy as much as you can, however you gotta do it." yikes again.