~2004. My highschool civics teacher told the class that real estate was always a good investment because it only went up. I didn't really trust him at the time though.
Real estate can be a good investment, even pre 2008 crash. What can be dangerous is over leveraging. A primary residence isn't really an investment, still worth buying though.
He was just echoing the same sentiment lead to all those house flippers. He was a wealth of conservative BS and that was just one of his thinly veiled prosperity gospel moments.
I mean, if you had money at the time and bought a house in one of the larger cities or their suburbs, you would probably be loaded by now, even though you would regret it for about 5 years after the crash
This "teacher" also would complain about wellfare queens who had children just to claim more benefits, that the best thing that could happen to a country is to be invaded by the US because they'll rebuild afterwards and that every Union but teacher's Unions were obsolete today, among other things.
The wealthy are buying up properties either to rent out or if they're Chinese, to move their wealth to places their government can't take it from. They absolutely own propriety, but not with the intent to flip.