In the late 20^th Century, the get-rich-quick fad of choice involved investing in the fledgling Internet as companies with vague concepts and more vague business plans sprang up on the webscape frontier. All was speculation, of course, and the market correction took down established companies riding the stock price skyrocket as well as the newly minted companies with no revenue stream other than stock. With a modicum of reflection, the crash was as predictable as it was inevitable.

So, too, was a larger crisis looming ahead. Economists predicted the coming real estate crash, but were drowned out in the furor over the so-called dot-com bust. Toward the end of the 20^th century, housing prices began to drift upward at a faster rate than the cost of construction, another sign of over-optimistic valuation with no basis other than the push to be the first on your block to be the first on your block. Older homes went on the block at ever-higher prices also, to fund the cost of upward mobility. Pasture land and orchards turned into house farms, with a single last crop, underwritten by developers in a feeding frenzy of expanding profit margins.

As the price of houses quickly outstripped inflation and the ability of the average buyer to make payments, banks extended inflated credit at lower rates to put people into houses they could not possible afford on a long-term basis, with interest-only loans and balloon payments guaranteed to encourage overextended home owners to sell at inflated prices and move on to an even higher-priced dwelling every few years. Even as automobile leasing moved into a second generation of drivers who never actually owned the evermore expensive cars they drove, home ownership—despite the lack of equity-building–continued to be considered the holy grail of financial stability.

As a typical geographically mobile technology worker, the Unix Curmudgeon had weathered the largely inflation-driven real estate bubble of the last quarter of the 20^th century through a succession of houses across the country that alternated between inflation and stagflation, from double-your-money in five years to nearly flat values over the next five years, selling a house in 1994 for ten times the price of his first house, purchased in 1974. Across the span of 20 years, the children had grown up and moved on, which started a downsizing trend with the purchase a modest town house condominium for less than half the selling price of the last upwardly mobile edifice. This move realigned the monthly payments to a reasonable percentage of reliable income. No real profits ensued from all this house trading, as the cyclical housing market, coupled with maintenance costs, real-estate fees, moving costs, and taxes on moderate capital gains kept the equity at a fairly constant 20% of purchase price.

Another move and another city raised payments and reduced equity (along with a much-reduced income, the result of the danger of moving a two-income family to a one-income situation, and the perils of job-hunting in late middle age), followed by another right-sizing move to a better job and a smaller, cheaper house in the early 21^st century, in the lull between the dot-com debacle and the out-of-control housing bubble—in fact, closing the deal the day before the terrorist attacks that so clearly demarcated the two centuries politically, socially, and economically.

Fast forward to the bursting of the housing bubble, beginning in 2008 with the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage ponzi scheme and the house-of-cards credit default swaps and hedge funds that propped it up. The 2001-2006 period was not the first five-year period in which housing prices doubled, but undoubtedly the first in which other investments stagnated and actually declined in value. First, retirement savings that had been flat for years despite steady deposits took a sudden dip. Then, the housing market began a long free-fall to, as predicted a decade earlier, align prices with costs. Unfortunately, the consequences of such a realignment essentially froze housing sales: over-extended homeowners–counting on trading up to forestall balloon payments–defaulted when they could not make the true payments. The cascade of unemployment as construction ground to a halt and supporting businesses failed resulted in more foreclosures. After a wave of bank failures, the remaining banks, gutted by loss of value in investments, had no money to lend, and would-be buyers were either no longer qualified for standard mortgages under reasonable rules or cautious of paying too much for a house that would lose value faster than they could pay off the loan.

With an unprecedented number of foreclosures and millions of other homeowners “stuck” in homes they no longer want or need but cannot sell, the American workforce has lost its mobility, and the economy continues to stagnate. Over the past three years, housing prices have continued to plummet, with no buyers. Into this environment, the Unix Curmudgeon and the Nice Person plunged headlong into a failed retirement plan that involved moving Chaos Central from the trackless wilderness of Montana to the bustling shores of Puget Sound, where we spent several decades before our dozen-year adventure in Montana. With promises of better Internet connectivity (not to mention proximity to grandchildren and a thriving fiber arts community equal to that found in western Montana), we got mobile, telecommuting to the old job while looking at local opportunities for consulting, collecting our “retirement pensions” to finance the bold move. Thus, we were able to–for the time being–support two houses, as the Montana house, a turn-of-the-twentieth-century gingerbread cottage, got lots of lookers, but no buyers.

The cute little cottage, a few blocks from the Bitterroot River in the shadow of the majestic Bitterroot Mountains, withstood its 95^th and 96^th Montana winters largely empty, absorbing huge amounts of money in maintenance, as the housing market continued in free-fall. Finally, it became the dream home of a young couple with small children and steady work. It joined the rare handful of properties with a “Sold” sign in front, sold at essentially the price we paid for it in 2001 plus the cost of paint, roofing, and other repairs done over the 25 months it was on the market.

And that, friends and neighbors, is the market correction: moving housing prices back to when the rest of the economy went flat, at the turn of the century. There isn’t a recovery in sight: all indications point to a permanent correction, where houses are priced at what they cost to build, period. No huge profits for developers. Fewer house farms springing up in former pastures and clearcut forests. More urban redevelopment, as it becomes cheaper to replace than to renovate dilapidated homes and affordable to renovate older but graceful homes when the properties are not overpriced compared with wages and materials. For many, the wait is not over. Life savings will be lost and credit ratings will be ruined, for those who bought in the bubble and can’t stay in place or who can’t afford their inflated payments or who have lost their jobs in the economic shift. For the rest of us, “retirement” in the 21^st century looks like just another career phase with telecommuting and flexible hours, staying in our overpriced homes as long as possible.