If you are looking at the country’s latest real estate news and are wondering whether the bottom has fallen out of the real estate market and it’s maybe time you looked for something else to invest your money in, don’t!

The phrase “safe as houses” did not originate casually. Real estate has always been a great area to invest and though the market has suffered from occasional peaks and troughs these are an inevitable part of the progression rather than evidence that real estate is beginning to lose its glow as a great area to make money.

We are, at the moment, locked into a cycle of foreclosures which has grabbed newspaper headlines eager to catch on anything that will sell copies and it has resulted in a short-sighted feeding frenzy of negative publicity.

Now, this is not to say that an increase in foreclosures is good news. No. Foreclosures are problematic and they are accompanied by a certain amount of heartache and discomfort. They are, also, a vital part of the way our economic system works and act as a self-correcting mechanism which slows down and overheated market and returns balance to house prices.

Without foreclosures the following things would happen: 1. New house buyers would be squeezed out of the market as house prices would rise and rise. New house buyers are part of what drives the housing market so when they are squeezed out of the system it is never a good thing. 2. House buyers would be locked within their particular income bracket in terms of the house they could buy and they would never be able to move out of it. 3. Real estate investors would be unable to step in and jump-start a sluggish economy as there would be no opportunities.

Luckily, the way our economy is structured we have the foreclosure system which acts as a type of gear that allows us to shift down and speed up so we can scale up instead of getting locked in a one-speed market that is destined to run out of fuel.

Foreclosures present the smart real estate investor with the perfect opportunity to create win-win situations where he helps out homeowners stuck in a debt-trap, offers properties to new home owners at prices that allow them to get their foot on the property ladder at a much better level than they would otherwise have been able to afford.

In the process, real estate investors also benefit which is also a good thing for the economy at large. None of this would have been possible without the foreclosure system we have set up as a means of maintaining a balance in our economy.