Almost anyone who bought real estate in the last 24 months have lost money for the same reason that almost anyone who bought dot-com stocks (and most other stocks) in 2000 and 2001 lost money. It's the aftermath of a financial bubble.
The prices for both dot-com's and real estate should have been going down: they are just not really worth that much. The economy doesn't need more houses (given our current high vacancy rate) or more companies selling dog food on the internet.
Subprimes were indeed not what brought down the economy, nor was dot-com in 2000 per se. They were both symptoms of a much bigger bubble. The most worthless trash, like "subprimes" and dot-com's (not the ones that actually make money but the ones that lost money on each sale and tried to make up on volume, you know, just like losing money every month on rental cash flow but somehow there will be a bigger fool down the line to buy the rental property from you) just show up near the very top of a bubble. IMHO, the term "subprime" was merely an invention in an attempt to make the peons think "prime" is different, just like companies like CSCO were thought as islands of stability during the initial collapse. No, there is no such island. Bubble pervaded through the entire economy, sure many company may not get the 100% reduction in stock price, but would take a big haircut nonetheless because bubble valuation had been part of their valuation too.
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
