Most of the country never became outrageously overpriced.  It was mainly the Southwest, parts of the Northeast (not Philly or Baltiless), San Francisco, and Florida.  A little bit of "froth," as Uncle Alan would say, in other areas, but nothing like Miami, Vegas or Phoenix where it was Armageddon once the money stopped flowing and people suddenly realized they were living in Miami, Vegas and Phoenix.

Prices are crashing here (finally), but it isn't really doing too much damage to the local economy.  Unemployment was at about 3.6% when the labor market peaked, and now it's up to about 4%.  Obviously having the relative stability of federal jobs, especially at a time when the government is expanding at a fast pace and with a lot more to come, helps with that, so it's not really fair to compare it with other places.

But I have a hard time imagining, based purely on the price and income numbers, that the remaining bubbletowns -- and we're basically down to Boston, New York and DC now -- will see anything like what happened to South Florida, where it was, literally, street after street of seeing every third or fourth house either on the market, as the owners tried to bail, or already foreclosed.  My parents' bought their house in 2001 a little before things took off, and it nearly quadrupled in value by the 2005 peak.  It's nearly back down to where it was when they bought it.

And that was in an area that was apparently not hit too hard compared with others.  Miami was much worse.  Prices peaked around $400k (about 10-15x income).  That's in the third-poorest of the major American cities (trailing only Detroit and New Orleans).

Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin