We can all hope for a boom but it's probably more tortoise than hare. 

Then IRS argued that "book keeping and research" was a business activity when a taxpayer made over a million flipping pre construction contacts on condos, back in the boom.  

Scott Hamilton describes well the post war boom inflating CA real estate prices (see also Schumacher's Buy and Hold).....Honestly, I am not sure you can cash flow positive properties in many major CA cities (think LA, SF, etc).....

Same aspect to loan servicing or collection of hospital bills or car payments clearing some collection service, if the obligation exists then the collector is entitled to additional late fees.But if there is no financial risk to a collector they are only passing funds through as received, that's simply management.

Downtown, midtown, corktown, and a few other neighboerhoods are booming.

I am not wild about taxes and landlord/tenant laws in TN or I would be very tempted to invest in Memphis, you guys are doing a booming business there.

After highschool I got a job as a bill collector.

There were few real bids even at the low starting prices that were only a third the price that similar homes fetched during the boom a couple years ago. http://dealbreaker.com/2008/05/06/Who is actually bidding up the properties?

Florence is building up, but it has only done so because the rest of the Phoenix area has been booming.

In real estate, there are also hundreds of millions of dollars that were loaned to develop housing and infrastructure in oil boom areas like North Dakota.