” some banks were not cooking the books because, like Goldman, they had shorted the real estate market enough to protect themselves.”

But it's not “better” to be fraudlently selling known garbage with one hand while betting against it with the other, deliberately killing the “investment” you're fraudulently selling.

It's just a different kind of fraud.

Darwin-Freidman-Rand-Granspan and now we have what?

60% of your income is a deep pit to be stuck in, if things don’t go well. There is so much shadow inventory in the real estate market now that I am very skeptical of prices coming up anytime soon, In fact, prices may go down. So why not invest your money somewhere else and buy the vacation home some time later when the price is lower?

Look at the Agreement of Sale papers that you signed. The disposition of the $1000.00 will be clearly stated.

Interesting views Sramana. I have been following the real estate market for a longish period now, particularly in India, generally the US as well. From a monetization perspective, the US market has seen a lot of action on Mobile and tablets (where not just presence as an app, but UX matters as well) . So that can be a way ahead as well, with equally attractive monetization opportunities. Expanding bouquet of services to realtors is workable, but execution of that involves repetitive marketing costs, with low differentiators.

over regulation