I know that this is an unpopular sentiment right now, but having a “friend” recommend that a person with ~$135K annual income buy an “investment” condo for $825K sounds an awful lot like a bubble to me.

Just my 2 cents, but I would not be jumping into any new “investments” at this point in time. If you want to focus on genuinely safe stocks, etc., that’s pretty reasonable, but I think that we are in an even bigger credit bubble today than we were in 2008, thanks to central banks around the world.

A bubble doesn’t require NINJA loans. All you need is loose credit (which is what happens when rates are held at artificial lows/ZIRP for an extended amount of time), and speculation. There is plenty of both right now, and I don’t see how this will end in a benign way.