I used to be much more heavily invested in the market before I got into RE.

There are often companies that advertise there heavily and usually offer a discount.

The ups and downs and the stages of each cycle are heavily followed in the commercial space (every big commercial brokerage has a PowerPoint slide in each of their decks about the stage of strip malls, apartments, office, hotel, etc.)Trying to time a market is crazy - but that is not what most people mean when they say they want to "time a market."

Now the grout is cracking between the tiles in the heavily traffic areas.  

I concentrate heavily on the new multi-use developments in the downtown area including Crossroads West (Cityscape Residential @ SW Blvd & I 35), the 27th & Gilham development (Milhaus/TITANBuilt), Berkley Riverfront(MW Builders).I am very interested in the revitalization of Kansas City, MO.

But these are really very necessary to investing, especially in places Detroit which was heavily dependent on one industry, in this case the Automotive Industry.

My research shows that the typical deposit size needs to be in excess of 40 % and access to low/no money down deals is heavily restricted.

Building wealth by buying gold and going heavily into "good debt" might also work, but in the wrong market, it could be a disaster.

I just happen to be fortunate enough to be able to do both things, max 401K and invest heavily in long term buy & hold real estate. 

Anchoring is a well-documented cognitive bias that describes the human tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information offered (the "anchor") when making decisions.