Writes Lance Connelly: “For better or for worse, I’m based in the San Francisco Bay area. When I arrived in 2005, the housing boom was in high gear. My wife and I looked in a new development and the cheapest house was $1.3MM. I knew the market would eventually collapse, so instead of worrying about whether we could afford a house (which we clearly couldn’t), we began saving, while paying off my student loan debt. We are now debt free.

“One day I was talking with a colleague who recently left the world of real estate, and I told her how I’m waiting for the California real estate market to implode, before I buy. She accused me of hurting the economy, because I was GASP! waiting for a lower price.

“”Now she’s a friend and very nice, but in need of some basic education in economics, which I proceeded to give. But it truly amazes me how many people think this way. Why is it OK to buy summer clothes in the fall when the stores are trying to liquidate their inventory, but waiting for an inventory-reduction sale on real estate is somehow bad?

“I can’t say that we won’t need a mortgage whenever we decide to buy our home, but at least by waiting, it should be smaller and manageable.

“By the way, those same $1.3MM+ homes are now less than one million. Still way out of my range, but moving in the right direction.”