My parents sold their "cookie cutter" 4 br. 2.5 bath track home in San Jose during Spring of 2006 for $800k. They bought it in 1984 for $117k. The home was bought by a realtor as her primary residence. Now, the house is vacant and has been on the market for over a year.

Since then they have moved to Murrieta, Ca (Riverside County for reference), and were able to buy a much larger, less expensive home, and made a hefty down payment and still had a few hundred grand to invest in other instruments.

Lake Elsinore, Ca, which is minutes from where my folks moved to, was featured in the Jennifer Aniston edition of GQ as one of the country's hardest hit area due to foreclosures.
http://men.style.com/gq/features/ful...7779&pageNum=3

It's all about timing.