Over the past few years, the United States has had a real estate boom that has been unprecedented.

Assume your stocks boom and no one pays off the mortgages.

During the real estate boom, many home buyers received mortgages with low introductory rates that were to increase after two or three years.

The recession was tied to the 9/11 and dot.com events so the local banks who operate nationally and internationally were impacted a bit.Charlotte is similar to Portland OR and Seattle WA in that it sort of missed the boom so the market is healthy now.

I'm glad to hear your enthusiasm, and wish you luck in the current real estate investor's boom!

While these numbers are not as high as in the boom time, they are still much higher than they were pre-boom.Negative Factors:1) Record number of homes on the market.2) #1 Foreclosure market in the country.3) Over 40% of homes listed for sale are vacant.The other thing that is happening is that rents are rising significantly.

The Fed caused the housing boom by dropping interest rates to fix the recession after the dot com bust.

I plan to make my first investment in a year or two, just because I dont have money and im still in school.It depends on what you are talking about.Many metro areas in the US have seen rising prices in 2007.The US has seen over 60 years of rising prices yet there are many, many examples of communities where house prices fell.Much of the Midwest barely noticed that we were in a housing boom from 2000-2005.There was a recession in the US in 2002.

Cities that are doing well now in the S&P/C-S index are cities that were much less prone to high appreciation during the boom years.

Investing in up and coming communities has always been an interest of mine, living in So Cal I've always heard about these booms and buying in at the right time, so of course I'm interested.Also, what is leasing with an option to buy?