I thought that you guys might find the following article interesting

http://www.investopedia.com/features/crashes/crashes4.asp

The Florida Real Estate Craze

When: 1926
Where: Florida

The amount the market declined from peak to bottom: Land that could be bought for $800,000 could, within a year, be resold for $4 million before crashing back down to pre-boom levels. The prices were so inflated that to buy a condo-style property in 1926, you would’ve had to pay the same as you would now have to pay for a luxury home in the guard-gated communities in Miami ($4,500,000)–without adjusting for inflation!

Synopsis: In the 1920s, the United States of America was chugging along like the British Empire of the 1700s, and it was only natural that people were beginning to believe such prosperity was infinite. But it wasn’t the stock market that was the recipient of a bubble. It was the real estate market.

In 1920, Florida became the popular US destination/residence for people who don’t like the cold. The population was growing steadily and housing couldn’t match the demand, causing prices to double and triple in some cases, which was not exactly unjustified at this point. But, news of anything doubling and tripling in price always attracts speculators. So, once people began pumping huge amounts of money into the real estate market it took off. Soon everyone in Florida was either a real estate investor or a real estate agent.

Unfortunately, the rules are the same whether you pay too much for a stock or for a piece of land: you have to make that much more to claim a profit. This did happen for awhile, and land prices quadrupled in less than a year. Eventually, however, there were no “greater fools” to buy the disgustingly overpriced land, and prices began to adjust ever so subtly. Speculators realized there was a limit to the boom, and began to sell their properties to solidify their profits while they could.

Then everybody simultaneously saw the writing on the wall, and panic selling ensued. With thousands of sellers and very few buyers, prices came down with a sickening thud, twitched a bit, and then crawled down even lower.

Taken from a post by “redwing”

Interesting Post..
Legendary Funds Manager Predicts Utter Global Collapse Stemming From
Bursting of property bubble.

Often called “Never Been Wrong Robertson”, the former head of Tiger
Management (once the largest hedge fund in the world), is extremely
worried about the speculative bubble in real estate.

Specifically, he is very worried about a world that is sustained by
American consumer spending which is in turn 1/4 sustained by a
property bubble. He predicts that 20 million people could lose their
homes once the property bubble bursts.

Even more worrisome, he thinks central banks around the globe out of
desperation will try to re-inflate the world economy with more
liquidity that will create an inflationary spiral unseen in the
economic history of mankind.

“Where does it end?”, Insana asked Robertson. “Utter global
collapse,” he answered. But not just economic collapse … collapse
of epic proportions. Collapse and disintegration of all
infrastructure, including government. Inflation will run into the
double and triple digits. “Food production will fall. People will be
carrying around U.S. dollars in wheelbarrows like Germany,” he said.

There will be “total collapse of public infrastructure. Total
collapse of medical care systems. All public pension plans, Social
Security will collapse. All corporate pension plans will collapse.”

“The American consumer is effectively now supporting the rest of the
planet,” he continued. “Consumption rates in all other nations are
falling, have fallen to the point that the tax revenues to
governments, that the business and industries those nation states are
providing is now a net negative number relative to total debt service
and public cost, that this exists in virtually every nation state on
the planet now.”

And for much of this “doom”, interestingly, he blames the Bush-
Cheney “regime”.

“They have now consolidated power and money on the planet to the
maximum extent possible. The planet’s net liquidity, that is its, net
free cash flow. Is now a negative number. The planet is not simply
sinking into a sea of red ink; it is already sunk. The people just
don’t realize it yet,” he said.

According to Robertson, “the Bush-Cheney regime is preparing the
nation for transition from democracy into dictatorship because a
dictatorship will be necessary to control, in 5 years time, food and
water riots.” He said “the federal government, that part of Patriot
II Act, the internal exile, that the government is going to have to
build now huge detention compounds on federal lands, probably in the
West where the land is available, to potentially house 50 million or
more citizens that will be in financial ruin.”

In 10 years time, whoever is left will be effectively starting again,
he said.

“More importantly, and I’m trying to think how we imply this or how
we express this to the people, what extraordinary times we are living
in and how the destruction of the planet has been engineered by the
Bushonian Cabal from 1980 to 1992, and then from 2001 to present,
which has effectively destroyed the economic liquidity of the
planet,” he said.

Robertson ended the interview by saying that he hopes he is not alive
to see this.

“The lucky ones are the ones who are my age now,” he said.