One of the biggest reasons why we've seen a big increase in real estate prices is because there is stricly limited supply of real estate in good suburban metro areas. As the saying goes, they're not making any more land. The supply of computers, electronics, telephone service, and cars keeps increasing steadly but real estate close to cities has a limited supply so it has been rising in price. The price increases then generate some speculative excess increases in price that you see in every market from time to time, and some people will get nailed by speculating in housing. It happpens every day in the stock market. But you will not see a collapse in housing prices. There's too much demand and not enough supply for a major collapse to happen.
Your analogy breaks down when you consider REAL housing crashes. They're not making any more land in Japan or Argentina either.