Everything I've seen thus far about the market in California is pointing us towards hitting our peak of the market within the next couple years or so and there's not much to grow, also we're only predicted to have a small bump down in the market from what I've seen and not like the crash of 2008 from what I've seen.

As far as Bush reform, it lead to record levels of home ownership and soaring real estate prices, followed by a massive real estate crash.

@Jay Hinrichs,I agree that a sponsor must have a long track record that precedes 2008 crash.

After paying that off in eight years, I started looking again but the market was crazy and then crashed so I sat on the sidelines, saving and kept looking for several years before finally pulling the trigger on a six-family building in Sunnyside - I put $300k down, and used a cash out refinance on two other properties for the other $550k.

A few people saw the 2008 crash coming and made money through their foresight.

The main reason I have gone to QB online is because I had a computer crash and had significant work to rebuild the file, even with a fairly recent back up.  

Bank want 2 years tax returns, don't show a lot cause we own a lot of rental property, and my financials, which are fairly strong $2M net worth and 740 credit score, but a big black eye with a bankruptcy back in 2011 due to being over leveraged on rentals and the market crash.

Apparently, since the crash, the government made some rules about how much lenders could charge in relation to the total loan amount.

My wife and I are both very interested in real estate and have been since we bought our first house in CA in 2008 following the crash.

I tend to be overly conservative, but I saw lots of investors collapse during the last crash (I was a REO Listing Broker in a small town), and never want to be in that situation, it will happen again, its just a matter of when.