Historians Perspective needed - RE crash of 2007 -2010

[Cory Mccarthy]

I would like to hear from several of the historians here that went through the most recent housing collapse back in 2007 through 2010 regarding what happened to their buy and hold strategy in that kind of environment.  Specifically, how did the collapse of the housing market/prices affect you personally if you were executing a buy and hold strategy at the time of the collapse?  If homes were already mortgaged and were cash flow positive at the time, despite losing considerable equity and maybe no longer being able to leverage any of that equity (or lack thereof) and thereby significantly slowing expansion plans for a few short years, did the collapse of home pricing pose a significant risk or financial set back to you in other forms such as loans being called due (particularly Private money or hard money loans as opposed to conventional), were you forced to sell properties for a significant loss for some reason that I am not understanding or seeing, were rents considerably affected in the downward direction for a short period of time, or where there other significant financial set backs you encountered as a result of the collapse of housing values that may not be easily identifiable to a newbie such as myself?   As I see it, there were several downsides at the time including and clearly not limited to:

Equity loss

Tightening of Credit

Over-Leveraged folks losing homes to foreclosure

Job losses causing some folks to not be able to meet financial obligations (rents)

But these could easily be offset by some of the positives at the time, particularly for those in a buy and hold position:

Increased pool of renters as folks lost their homes

Increased demand forcing rental prices up (after some period of time of course)

Banks (private lenders??) favoring those that were not over leveraged

Reduced interest rates

If you had homes at the time that were mortgaged, whether conventional or through private money and they were fully rented at the time with good LTV's prior to the crash, I would think the positive cash flow would position you well to weather that storm assuming your loans were locked in. Provided you weren't trying to dump under performing properties at the time, you may have experienced some short term heightened turnover if tenants lost jobs in the recession, but I still would think that replacement tenants would have been easily found as it is not like all of sudden millions of people no longer needed housing to stay in, so everyone would eventually land somewhere, right, particularly if you are in an upper income area, where unemployment wasn't nearly as badly affected? I can see commercial real estate taking a much stronger hit as businesses closed and vacancy rates skyrocketed, but I am thinking that residential at the time for savvy REI's would have had experienced minimal downsides that just required you to hunker down, conserve cash and wait for the recovery to open up a windfall of cheap properties and huge opportunities. Did you all of sudden experience similarly large vacancy rates for some reason that I am not seeing, were you unable to meet payment obligations for some reason, did you lose significant property outside of losing equity positions, did private money lenders all of sudden call in loans if they got hurt in markets?

Any thoughts you can share on this risk factor and experience would be much appreciated as I am preparing to rebut my wife's inevitable concerns that there is too much risk inherent in real estate investing and I am not entirely sure there still aren't bubbles being created by the abundance of cash that has been infused into the economy by a print happy fed.  And sorry for the long winded post here, I just wanted to make sure I was being clear about my concerns/questions and need to fully understand this risk before jumping in with both feet, full throttle.  Thanks in advance for your thoughts and insights.