img_0105Remember those heady days of easy real estate cash? Ah yes. Zero down mortgages, fresh paint, new carpet, granite countertops and flipping houses to the next sucker. Making money was so simple and low risk that anyone could do it!

Let’s stroll down memory lane and look back at the time when all it took to make it in real estate was to have a pulse. In 2008 I was in a book store in the finance and economics section (where else!). I walked by a shelf packed to the gills with make money fast real estate books. I stopped, had a flash back to the dot-com boom era, and decided I’m going to photograph these books for posterity. 

Clearly the banks had a lot to do with the mess. But they were also encouraged by cheap money from the Fed and politically correct programs like the Community Reinvestment Act to make bad loans. Finally, many of the “victims” in all of this were perfectly willing to participate when they thought they were going to be making a lot of money by buying a home they couldn’t afford. Nobody was forcing these people to take out these large mortgages. There’s plenty of blame to spread around. 

Update: I saw a link on the Diehards forum to this article in the WSJ about fad money books. Something to consider when you’re walking the aisles looking for investing advice:

How to Survive The 2009 Boom in Money Books

Just a year or so ago, the personal-finance bookshelf was a happy-go-lucky place where everybody and their neighbor was about to become a millionaire. Now it’s more like a bomb shelter stocked with canned goods for a long battle.

Brilliant!

Now I present to you my tribute to the Real Estate Bubble of Ought Eight. And yes, these are all the real titles of the books with no PhotoShop changes:

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