The US has had a number of real estate bubbles throughout its history. But until this century, all the real estate bubbles were local. This was the first time that a real estate bubble went national.
I would highly recommend reading the latest edition of “Irrational Exhuberance”, by Robert Shiller. The book does a great job of analyzing speculative bubbles and it contains a lot of info about the history of real estate in the US.
