[Rick Lee]

I don't see anything he said there that was untrue. There hasn't been a collapse of real estate prices. They don't skyrocket anymore, but I don't know of a nationwide trend of 50% or otherwise huge drops in values. A 10% drop may sound like a lot of cash, but it's not a huge percentage.

The subprime industry has pretty much collapsed though. But that was due to liquidity problems from loan repurchases, caused by fraud and first payment defaults (fpd's). That has had an effect on real estate prices (not everywhere though), but only to the extent that such borrowers now can't get sweetheart deals on loans or bet on sudden appreciation to pay off the negative equity they build up with Option ARM's.