Lots of people are learning an expensive lesson.  The TV shows made "flipping" look so easy, everyone was getting in on it.   

Speculators who bought multiple homes  were once a boon to the U.S. economy when they pushed home prices to record levels over a five-year period.

Many are stuck with unoccupied properties they cannot sell and mortgages that are bigger than the appraised value of the home, a situation known as being "upside down."

The glut of unsold homes comes as lenders are making it harder for borrowers to get loans, causing defaults to escalate and home prices to decline further.

Investors that initially purchased a property with no money down or a very low down payment could now find themselves upside down, and without prospects of selling the property soon may opt to just walk away.

Nearly one-third of prime mortgage defaults in Nevada, and 25 percent in Florida were on non-owner occupied properties as of June 30, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Speculators reaped hoards of money as bidding wars erupted for properties often before they were listed or even built.

People were buying a condo in Florida, or five condos in Florida before they even broke ground, and before they even had the condo half-way built they would sell them for hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits.  But housing is cyclical, and the record sales and price spree was unsustainable, economists and industry experts note.

The big lesson is that even during hot times, if you're going to invest in real estate or stocks or bonds, gold or silver, or anything, and you try to time the market and invest with the intent of flipping in a very short period of time, eventually you are going to get burned.