Sell me your house for 20% discount? After all, it will be worth nothing tomorrow so I'm offering a good deal.
The biggest bust I've seen was in Houston in the 80's. Houses went down maybe 10%. Another "big" bust was in LA in the 90's. Houses went down maybe 5%.
Whoop de do. Big busts there.
Real estate IS NOT Wall street, and never will be.
This is not a popular opinion with the "sky is falling" crowd here.
When I was talking about a bust, I was talking about California, not the whole country. The Houston bust was nothing. Orange County went down more than 50% in 1991-1995. I know - I was there. We bought our condo in 1998. By 2005, it has increased in value by 350%, and we sold and left while the leaving was good. It is a bubble that is going to explode.
Houston is a good example, but it's worse than that:
Houston home prices fell 22 percent from $111,000 to $86,800, and also took 15 years to rebound. Counting inflation, the average Houston home, which cost just $159,700 in 2004, is actually worth less now than it was 22 years ago.
http://money.cnn.com/2005/09/19/real_estate/buying_selling/price_declines/index.htm
This bubble has set up maybe half a dozen areas around the country for the same fate.