I always thought the US was late to the party when it comes to property. In  much of the US, you can still buy property quite cheaply. The median price for a home is still far below that in Europe. When people talk about housing bubbles in the US (and there is one in Boston, San Fran, LA and NY) I ask them to travel to Padova, Italy, or Barcelona, Spain, or Glifada, Greece. The prices int hese areas in the mid 1990s were astounding. I'm not even going to mention Tokyo or Hong Kong or Vancouver.

That being said, there have been housing booms and busts before but unless you live in hot spots like San Francisco and that area, a housing bust rarely yields appreciable deflation. What we call a bust in the US is really a long period of stagflation.

Even in densely populated and prosperous Connecticut, you can still buy a decent sized home for $270,000. Which sure beats buying a home in Italy and Greece.