There are ways of covering up a poor market with artificially low interest rates, injection of capital which causes inflation, and other little tricks.

The combination of overly aggressive mortgage brokers, appraisers who are in the realtor's/mortgage broker's pockets, and greedy lenders led to a situation where housing demand was grossly artificially inflated.

The demand for housing was and still is being artificially inflated because lenders were loaning money to people who had no business getting those loans.

This allowed me to have more intelligent conversation with investors.

When the lenders were loaning money to anybody and their dog, it massively and artificially increased demand, which massively and artificially increased prices.

For them to set up a trust fund leads me to believe one of them certainly has some financial intelligence.

The difference in value is the trust that we place in one another that goods, work, ingenuity, creativity, or intelligence will be brought to the negotiation table.

The person who didn't have the financial intelligence to not lose his own house was able to do a shortsale.....that's pretty friggin' scary.

Your question left out some important information that would allow us to give you an intelligent response.That said, I'll give you a broad answer.

I am not trying to discourage anyone, as you can eventually get to a point to where other people can do most things for you, but getting there generally takes a long time (finding intelligent, reliable people is not easy).