Jack, you think there were so many repos because prices held steady? Like all those people figured instead of selling their houses normally and getting back their equity, they'd just leave them to the bank? You were, or are, in denial of what happened.
P.S.: Here, jog your memory:
http://www3.telus.net/public/wertheim/2005/10/slippery-devil-that-real-estate-bubble.html
That means that even popped bubbles do not always go by that name. During the most recent real estate downturn, in the late 1980's and early 1990's, prices fell by more than 10 percent in New York and more than 20 percent in Los Angeles, according to the National Association of Realtors.
Adjusted for inflation, the losses were far worse: about 30 percent in parts of the Northeast and even more than that in Southern California. Prices peaked in about 1988 and did not return to their highs - relative to the price of everything else in the economy - until about 2000.
In Boston, where prices fell 25 percent in the early 1990's, after adjusting for inflation, "people were bringing checks to the table" to cover shortfalls in selling prices because their mortgages were larger than what the buyer paid, said Robert Buckley, a real estate lawyer in Boston.
http://money.cnn.com/2002/12/02/pf/yourhome/q_housingbusts/
In Los Angeles, home prices shed 21 percent of their value between 1989 and 1996, with the typical house selling for $172,900. (The peak was $214,800 in 1989 following a five year, 77-percent jump.)