Sorry Slade.  Normally I agree with most of what you post, but not this time.

I feel badly for the people who are underwater on their homes, but the whole rates are lower than ever & prices are going up is what got us into this mess in the first place.  My house is a case in point.  I know that it is pointless to argue big picture from small examples, but I get annoyed every time I think about this.  We bought our house (teensy) in 1993 for 116K.  The "value" rose slowly, which was appropriate until about 2002-forward, when the "value" shot up to 330K, which is simply a ridiculous number.  Two bedrooms, 1 bath, no dining room or garage, on a smallish suburban lot.  That news was just awful for a couple of reasons - the first being the tax rate we were paying on our supremely expensive piece of property - the second being that we couldn't sell it & go somewhere else, without having to cough up a considerable amount of more money on top of what we could sell it for; which would have made us upside down in a new home, should we have chosen to sell the old one.  High prices & low rates also, in my experience, make for more soap bubbles & this we don't need. 

The people who are doing well right now have a right to do well - I am not against capitalism in all its glory, but articles like this in the Times or the Globe, even though they throw in a few caveats, I think represent the real estate world in an unrealistic way.