Smart flippers are also stacking cash away from the huge sales now so they are prepared for any possible crash in the future.

Then next spring the market crashes, err readjusts... and next year at this time the house is worth $200k.

and what, in your view, constitutes a crash?

Another thing to think about with deposits is how contractors always end up in the hospital or crash their truck or have something crazy happen to them in the middle of your job.

Are you going to board an airplane that has a 99% probability of crashing?

We also got a crash course in hurricanes and realized this is a major consideration if you are looking close to the coast.

I live in a so called "cashflow market" (Milwaukee) and have always made a lot more on equity than on cash flow, even before the last 3 years.But I also know investors who have grown and managed a portfolio "city cash flow properties" for decades and have almost nothing to show for - because capex exceeded cash flow.High appreciation markets are also risky to invest - while I feel very strongly about that market not going to crash as a whole, I am not so sure if markets like TX will not come under pressure after the exuberant gains of the last years.The Midwest is the only region left with an affordability index over 100 (median family can afford a median home), so just like communicating vessels in physics we may see a market rebalancing, where remote workers will move to where living expenses are affordable (not only housing) and boom markets will see an adjustment (not a crash).And even if you are an apartment syndicator, you need cash flow to boost NOI - there is just no way around it.

Wholesaling seems to fall in a legal grey area, and with the number of guru-influenced wholesalers out there at the moment who are swindling people and marketing properties in manner which likely violates state laws I wonder if it is only a matter of time before wholesaling comes crashing down in most states.I read in a book titled Secrets of buying and selling real estate -- without using your own money by Robert Shemin that one lesser used method for wholesaling besides double closing or assignment of contract is to secure an irrevocable option to purchase a property.

I took a crash course in investing and it was full of hype, so I wanted to get all my answers up front before purchasing my first property. 

The 2008 crash and COVID had no impact on our target tenant pool.