The beautiful thing about real estate investing is there are several avenues you can choose from depending on your end game. 

I would love to show you around our beautiful city. 

It is very simple.IF and IF the GP uses 30 year financing (just assume this product exist), even with variable rate every 10 year, then this problem never exist.( The very beautiful thing about 30Y fixed rate for residential guaranteed by gov. is that the equity owner is forever in good shape financially ) ...So imo CRE is not speculative, but most investor has no clue to measure and understand the impact of interest rate, cap rate and short term / long term financing and fixed/variable debt.From an academic perspective, I agree with you...CRE should not be speculative but as @Brian Burke pointed out, for conservative operators, there were NO opportunities during this time period because all of the speculative operators bid up the prices to insane levels and they relied on rubes like me to fund this speculative bubble.

Purchase price: $220,000 Cash invested: $75,000 Sale price: $300,000 Beautiful 4Br 3 bath 2200sft Single family residence uplifted to its glory, and contemporary design and style.

I just bought my dream home, have a beautiful wife, and go out drinking 5 out of 7 days.

However, that's kind of the beauty of this forum.

Beautiful areas, I also like hwy 49 in Sierra foothills, hwy 9 saratoga to Santa Cruz, Hwy 35 "Skyline"",  us 129  "tail of the dragon" Tennessee, I'd like to ride the Al Can to Dawsons Creek 1 day.

This is beautiful.

There are so many different opinions and mine is just another one of them, so take it or leave it, the beauty of it all is you can do what you are comfortable with and what will work for you!

It is a beautiful area but because of the zoning and rules up there it would be difficult for the area to "blow up" and have a ton of new growth.