Autumn Gray, in this morning’s Journal, picks up on a remarkable trend in the Albuquerque real estate market: out-of-market buyers using their bubble money to buy investment properties here:

Such sales are part of a trend that home builders and real estate agents say is driving up prices in the Albuquerque metro area and making it more difficult for local buyers to find homes.
“I’ve seen properties that shouldn’t sell for more than $150,000 go for $200,000,” said John Sheffer, a real estate agent with the Vaughan Company Realtors.
Local real estate offices first saw the increased interest here about seven months ago, and activity has escalated since.
Now it’s not uncommon to spot groupings of California license plates at local home building sites.

One wonders what happens here, then, if my bubble-obsessed friend Aaron is right. I’d been thinking of this as a coastal phenomenon from which we were (at least relatively) insulated. I was imagining the housing market to be a series of relatively isolated islands. Autumn’s story suggests the bubble moves with more fluidity than I had understood.