On Mon, 4 Jan 2016 05:17:56 -0500, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

The balloon that was about to burst wasn't obvious until about 2006

That is not true of everyone. You can take a look at "the big short"
but more personally, I know that the guys who ran Centex (builders)
knew this was hokey in 2004 and they were not building spec houses
(AKA "inventory") even then. The customer needed to have a contract
with at least $50k down before they started building, in spite of the
fact that houses were sold in a lottery at the time. They also avoided
"investors" as much as possible. (only one home per customer was the
goal)

The owners (Hannigan and Ellers) sold the business right before it
crashed. I sold my stock when that happened at a pretty nice profit.