The Fed cited its dual mandate of achieving maximum employment and price stabilization as supporting its decision to raise rates, but stated that actual decisions to raise the federal funds rate are based on close readings and information about global and domestic economic developments; future decisions could be impacted by emerging economic factors.

There would be no more oil by 1990 and we would be freezing to death by "global cooling" by 2010.

Hi @Owen Franks, hope you have been doing well amidst the current global challenges!

@Diem Tran Here's some global perspective:Global property bubble fears mount as prices and yields spikehttp://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7ba6556e-e28d-11e4-ba33-00144feab7de.html

No offense taken Anish, easy housing credit almost collapsed the global financial system back in 2008, although one should argue that the system was already rotted out after a century of awful management and the subprime mortgage scandal was the final tipping point.

You also have out of area foreign buyers, who tend to be wealthy and want to park their money in blue chip real estate, or have family/friends here to help them get into the market.But at any rate, my vote is not for a "crash" per say like we had in 2008-09, but more of an appreciation slow down or even flattening in 1-2 years, possibly coupled to a tech slowdown and/or a significant global economic event.

The reason is the aggregate demand for credit is much much lower than in 2006 era lending.In fact, global demand for credit is arguably at 30 year low.

Should we start with a local Credit Union, Small Local Bank, Big Global Bank or a Quicken Loans type?

1-Interview agents2-ALmost every big name brokerage is localled owned and operated.You are getting a mom and pop with the big guys, just with global reach on the marketing and therefore more bang for your buck.If you aren't getting 1-1 attention from your agent, at any office, get a new one.

Global market cap of publicly traded companies is $75 Trillion. http://www.afr.com/real-estate/commercial/global-r...http://asia.nikkei.com/Markets/Equities/Global-sto...