If you'd bought a flimsy McMansion in one of America's sweltering boom zones just after the recession struck, you could have had it for a nickel. Now, prices are soaring once again. The boomiest boom areas of the boom time are booming!

The shithole oil boom towns of Montana are booming so much that not only is real estate unaffordable, but the towns can't afford to build schools to hold all the new kids or treatment plants to treat all the new sewage. (These towns are also infested by bloggers, a sure sign of the end times.)

In Phoenix, a place where no one in their right mind wants to live by choice, housing demand is so high that buyers searching for affordable homes are now forced to buy in the exurbs of Phoenix, an area even less desirable than Phoenix proper.

You can buy a $100 million Manhattan penthouse instead, if you like.

In Vegas, a literal desert inhospitable to human life, home prices are finally stabilizing after rising 30% in the past year.

In Texas, "known for its open spaces and cheap property" and novelty gun-shaped belt buckles, bidding wars are breaking out, which is a relatively new phenomenon in a state whose greatest natural resource is vast expanses of dusty plain. Bloomberg reports:

The boom shows that the U.S. real estate market’s rebound is extending beyond areas such as Arizona, Florida, California and Nevada, where prices are soaring after being hardest-hit by the crash that started in 2006. Texas, which largely avoided the collapse, is benefiting from employment growth and an expanding population, the more traditional forces of housing demand.

In other words, everything is going just as it should. Now's the time to snap up all the real estate you can—with borrowed money. And flip it! Up is the only direction! Next stop—catastrofortune!

[Photo: Flickr]