Click ....

http://finance.yahoo.com/real-estate/ ... e-money-in-2011-your-home

I'm reasonably insulated from the housing bubble/crisis. I live in an area where home values didn't have a big rise. I didn't use any crazy bank "products". I have a fixed rate mortgage and have reasonable equity in the house. Finally, I have no plans to move.

I'm very lucky. I have a lot of sympathy for young couples just starting out who got caught up in this craziness.

However, I have no sympathy for those that bought McMansions on a shoestring with stupid loans assuming that the bubble would last forever. They gambled, they lost, craps!

Can't feel bad for the young ones scoring a great deal in todays market. It still might drop some more but I truly believe it's a great time to buy. I can pick up a 2700 sq ft house for between 125k and 175k. Sometimes even cheaper. Too much house (and property taxes) for me. It would also mess up my debt free lifestyle.

Out here in the Heartlands we never saw the upheaval that the other more fashionable areas did. In fact with the good prices for crops we have seen many new homes being built in our area.

Having been in home construction early on in my life I got to know how the cost of building a house worked. The cement and 2 X 6's and shingles only cost so much, add to that the labor and what the lot costs then you have a real time price.

That doesn't work on the west coast or other parts of the country where a lot of folks live and were seeing those costs inflated by X amounts and still people were throwing money at them. 2 or 300K buys a real nice place out here but not much in L.A. Of course we have snow and cold and lots of heat and humidity.