You forgot the best of them all, the “self-employed real estate investor”. This is a very well known type which breaks into two categories. 1. The experienced investor that has seen it all before and has transitioned out of their properties except for those that truly cash flow. 2. The amateur investor. These are the folks that do not have any investment experience and buy into all the hype with no acknowledgment to fundamental values. We’ve also seen these types buying tech stocks in 1999 & 2000. They refied or HELOC’d and bought another property with the cash out. They now own several properties and have very little equity. I think they are really starting to suffer now. Their ARMs are resetting and/or their HELOC rates are skyrocketing and their negative cash flow is getting worse and worse every month to handle. They brought the bubble up and are definitely contributing to it’s down fall from panic selling and foreclosures.
I don’t think the news can down play this predicament for much longer. We are certainly in a worse situation than we were during the tech bubble. The real estate/credit bubble has a lot of complicated webs to it that affect a lot more people than the tech bubble did. A recession is eminent.
