I'm using the current situation (hopefully) to my advantage by buying a house now. The current market in the Hamilton, Ontario area has dropped by about 10%, and it just so happens that I'm looking at the moment. The plan is to buy a place with excellent property, a nice house, but maybe a dated interior.
I've done a few basement reno's so plan to do a small amount of work to fix a place up over at least 5 years (not planning on buying and flipping). I just don't want to buy a place that needs to be gutted...
Methinks if I can do it right, I can increase the value enough to take a step up when moving to a larger home in the future.