Sell Stocks and Buy House? (cash, real estate, foreclosure, long-term)

[ndfmnlf]

With stocks gaining close to 100% from the March 2009 lows while home prices are flattish or still decreasing, it seems like we have a nice arbitrage situation developing.

Sell stocks while they are rising and buy depressed real estate. Anyone think of doing this?

[smokingGun]

well it all depends how much your portfolio is up. I still have shares in tech stocks from 10 yrs ago before the great crash and i'm still underwater!

I think real estate is a good play if you can buy at a discount (REO/foreclosure!!!) and you can get positive cash flow from rents. But real estate is a long-term holding: in So Cal many areas took 8 or 9 years to recover from their drop during the last bust.