Hi,
I am a property investor in the UK, and as you may know, we are enjoying a great boom in capital values and liquidity. I have frequented a website here that is populated by bears mainly, and they are spouting doom and gloom.

The news we seem to hear in the UK is, that the bubble has burst for the US, and that sub prime lenders(those that lend to the less than credit worthy) are going bust every day. It is only a matter of time until we experience your downturn.

My questions are;
Are you really experiencing a bust?
If you are, how are you surviving it?

I buy my property Below Market Value, through repossession etc (foreclosures), and i imagine that i will prosper through a bust, are there any investors that follow my path? And if so, can you give me any tips?

Please be honest, if it's hot it's hot, if it's **** it's ****!!

Did I say something wrong?

No bubble,just correcting of some overly inflated areas driven by speculation from investors.What you here in the news mainly is overinflated markets that represent a very small parto fthe u.s. as a whole we do have our bad areas as everyone does.Eventually these will be revitalized within the housing cycle the question is when.

You can buy during any cycle and be profitable regardless of what the market is doing.The days of people flipping houses and making mistake after mistake and still turning a profit are long gone.

I'm doubtful of a bubble as well, but it was frothy for a bit. I just checked stats for the past 8 years here in Orlando FL, going by median home price we had been growing at a steady pace for many years, actually about 12-13% from 1999-2003, then in 2004 -2005 the rate jumped to 20-25% both years. Throughout 2006 we slowed significantly but still managed a ~3.5% increase in median home price. Bad Sign I see though is that the price dropped very slightly from dec 06-jan 07, feb statistics will be out soon, hopefully it was just a market quiver and not a sign.

As far as subprime lenders going bust everyday, that's true. Credit is getting much tighter for home loans. HSBC (one of the top 3 subprime lenders I beleive) just reported today a $10.6 BILLION "loss" on their subprime mortgages. New Century another BIG subprime player reported HUGE losses and are now under federal criminal investigations and may go under. And about 15+ smaller subprime lenders have shut down or significantly scaled back their operations within the last 4 months.