Several months ago my back porch wall collapsed and was only boarded up.

City populations expand and contract/collapse, and there are reasons for it -- government incentives for business, major transportation hubs, natural resources, climate, etc.

Local news this afternoon:http://www.wishtv.com/dpp/news/local/marion_county/home-collapses-closing-stretch-of-10th-street

As a college student I started by buying a house with an owner hold that was close to being demolished.I then rented all the rooms out to fellow students.We all worked at replacing the roof, plumbing, & the bottom course of limestone block as the walls were all limestone.Salt damp was a problem in the area & houses such as this we're collapsing on the first course of wall support.

An insured bank CD will only result in a loss if the entire US economic system collapses.  

People say that there is no way to actually predict the slowdown and collapse of our Capitalist Economy.

Your other thing is what you say here, this idea of the BRR method is set all over that, but what you really need to do is don't refinance, because if you refinance now you're stuck in a house a year from now where the market collapses, your equities are gone and you can't pay the debt off. that one of the things is she talked about cash out, refinance.

How about the sewer line is about to collapse for 10k.

Transaction volume in the commercial space has collapsed, and you have to high conviction in the potential rents to transact. 

San Fran hit '07 levels, and if you want international London has gone past '07 highs.http://www.burbed.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/M...San Fran ^http://www.economicshelp.org/wp-content/uploads/20...London ^From an arbitrage perspective, tier 2 cities are starting to look attractive from a real housing cost basis when you have to spend over 80% (sometimes over 100% if you are more junior in your career path) on living expenses to live out on the tier 1 cities.You can find 1% rule properties in the midwest, that won't suffer catastrophic market collapses, that generates 8-12% cash on cash returns, with the potential for 3-4% long term capital appreciation that you can lever up on.