Reinflating your own housing bubble.

• Position: Real Estate

If the housing market were human, it would look like it just wrestled a few alligators, after running an obstacle course through a snake pit. The market is beaten and bruised, but still trying to emerge from the recession. Greg Rand, author of Crash Boom!: Make a Fortune in Today's Volatile Real Estate Market, indicates that there are five trends that could help consumers beat the housing blues. "One of the key elements of a free market is chaos," Rand explains. "Chaos is how the markets figure out how to move forward.

"The important thing to realize in the midst of all these people talking about 'the housing market' is that the market isn't some nameless, faceless thing that lumbers around aimlessly as if it has a life of its own. The market is made up of buyers and sellers--people who are trying to figure out how to buy low and sell high.

"It doesn't matter if you're a homeowner or an investor: the secret to making sure your real estate doesn't turn into a money pit is to watch the trends so you can predict where the prices will rise and where they won't" Rand's bends to watch are:

* Short-term pain. Show me the market where home prices are back to 2002 levels, and I will show you a market that is overcorrecting.

* Overdevelopment. One of the reasons the market is overcorrecting is overdevelopment and speculaltion, as is the...