Judging by the number of forecloses and the fact that housing has collapsed in places like Phoenix -- buyers were considerably dumber than I gave them credit for. Even better I have friends out there who are trying to get me to buy into foreclosures, they're not only dumber than I gave them credit for they are intent on compounding their sins.

And yes, Realtors try to give me financial advice all the time. I'm not a sh*t-starter like Suzy; when I'm looking at houses on a Sunday afternoon I'm not looking for a fight but it really pisses me off to hear Realtors trot out these tired canards. I've even had one tell me that housing was the key to my future and my safe retirement. That I was "throwing money away by renting."

I've seen both my sister-in-law and my sister (one in the Northeast one in Arizona) lose 100,000s of dollars so maybe I am "throwing my money away" by renting but at least I'm not giving it to some shill as part of their commission.

Edited to add:

What I really, really hate is how Realtors seem to be trained to zero in on the wife. 100% of the time the Realtor hones in on me and tries to make me worry about my financial future. Someone over at NAR has decided that women need to nest and the best way to make a sale is to make the woman worry about nesting. I love it when I'm told "this is the perfect house." There is no perfect house, there are other homes -- they will come up forsale. About a year ago we looked at a really nice place for 900k out in Penn Valley. I loved it, it had land and didn't need any work. It was more than we wanted to spend and it eventually sold -- this spring what do I see? A nice house, with even more land with no work needed on the house for sale for 200k less than we were looking at spending before. Awesome!