the simple truth: it's all about leverage in the rising tide

sometimes the tide is created by booming local economy, for example, the metal/oil money flowing into Aus/Cad for the last 2 years, and the money that was earned or flushed into China,

sometimes the tide is a more general spec waves, it could be created by liquidity overflow, or just by general market herd behavior, or both,

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if one is sitting in the middle of such tide, by all means swim with it... and yes I'm all for the idea of buying the first home as soon as one can in general, whenever there is a need and there is reasonable projection of a stable family life

but I found it's very disturbing to see someone here only promotes the upside of the maximum leverage, and beyond the need or a principle residence... honestly I think that's a great disservice to particularly inexperienced people in those markets that currently are not enjoying great fundamental changes such as in those Canadian mining towns etc

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life comes often very fast, particularly in the downturns. Many people overestimates their projected earning power, and underestimate the actually quite high correlation of negative events (economy downturn, job loss, stock market loss, real estate market downturn).

Many of those who sold at the low are not necessarily not aware of the long term perspective of the real estate, it's that, unfortunately, due to over-leverage, cash flow shortage, or management stress, they can't live through day to day.

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it's also mightily comforting to see people injecting a few cooling advices. Hat off to miat and others.

so my words to those who are not in wildly rising tide and to "invest" in real esate now, vs buying a home to live: caution caution caution.