What's it going to take for the next real estate crash to happen?

[Jim K.]

BP contributors:

I for one believe we're not going to see a real estate crash anytime soon, and I firmly believe in the power of pessimistic thinking. But I'm also not wholly ignorant of all the aspects of this business, and I look at the fundamentals of what's going on, think about why the housing market is as it is, and I don't see fragility. The system is not about to fall apart. I'm obviously not alone here on Bigger Pockets.

But since at least 2015 when I started lurking in the forums here, there hasn't been a month that's gone by where some wannabe Cassandra or Chicken Little DIDN'T proclaim that a crash was coming. I have seen one mature-male-bovine-scatalogical reason after another why these people felt that way. Sure, there HAVE been commentators with what at least LOOK like well-formed reasons since the very beginning, but they were few and far between, peppered in among the many more wackadoodles proclaiming THE END IS NIGH.

So what I'd like to ask everyone with significant experience to comment on something else this thread: WHAT SHOULD WE BE LOOKING FOR? What WOULD signal the end of the road for you?  What will be the warning signs we should be watching out for? None of us have a working crystal ball, but what are you waiting to see before you start to really worry? What, in the end, will signal the next collapse?

[Austin F.]

The one thing I know for sure is that we'll only see it coming in hindsight.