> I also expected, as a result, a correction in the price of housing to actually realistic levels.

Housing prices were realistic. We know this because most of the Anglophone world has had similar experiences with housing prices without the "bubble" bursting, and because prices have gone back to where we started back before everything blew up.

There were bad loans, and financial products that were fraudulently repackaging them. Regulators were asleep at the wheel. And the government has played a huge part in getting housing prices to high levels. But the value of the homes themselves was and is clearly real because people remain willing to pay for them.