I suppose you could say we have World War II to thank.

Upon returning from the war, soldiers had their GI benefits to enjoy and a deep-seated desire to start a family. And so was born (quite literally) the baby boom, and an accompanying surge in home buying.

Out of the ashes of destruction arose an American middle class and the first generation able to more broadly buy homes with long-term mortgages.

Their kids, the now infamous baby boomers, decided this home-owning thing was a good idea. When their turn came in the 1970s, they surged into the real estate sector like a pig moving through the python!

By early 2006, they had convinced themselves and everyone else that real estate only goes up…

What a painful, rude awaking the 2006 to 2012 housing collapse was! I strongly warned of this in late 2005 in my newsletter. With 2008 the hardest time during that six-year period, and the subprime crisis of monumental proportions, it blew hardworking Americans out of the water and then drowned them in underwater mortgages, debt defaults and disgrace.

Thanks to my demographic and cycle research, this event was no surprise to us…

Personally, I was out of real estate early enough for the downfall between 2006 and 2012 to not impact my wealth in any way. And I’d warned my subscribers many times about the looming crisis, so many of them were also safely out of the sector when the sword fell as well.

I’ve actually received many notes from readers over the years telling me how my warnings saved them a fortune when the real estate bubble burst. One business person in our Network told me that he was spared millions by getting out of his real estate just before the crash. He was in the process of buying a building in South Florida in 2006 that was going to cost him somewhere between $10 million and $15 million. After attending one of our Demographics Schools (pre Irrational Economic Summit days) in Minneapolis, St. Paul, he hauled his board of directors out to a meeting with Rodney and me, and based on our research, cancelled that purchase. He’s grateful he did!