This latest report should put the notion to bed that the housing boom was largely driven by speculators. The National Association of Realtors annual Investment and Vacation Home Buyers Survey finds that investors and second home buyers snapped up one third of the homes sold in 2007.

While the volume of sales is down along with home sales in general, the market share of investors and second-home or vacation home buyers is 33 percent, close to the historic norms at the height of the housing boom.

Investors bought 21 percent of homes in 2007, down only one percent from 2006. And vacation home buyers dropped from 14 percent in 2006 to 12 percent in 2007.

Wait a minute. I thought there was a credit crunch. That vacation homes were piling up like college student laundry. That investors got out of housing and moved into gold, corn and oil.

So what's happening? Primary residence sales declined 10.0 percent to 4.34 million in 2007 from 4.82 million in 2006, but vacation sales (-30.6 percent) and investment homes (-18.1 percent) fell much more, possibly due to tighter credit and economic uncertainty.

As NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun points out -- second homes and investments are discretionary, so why invest? Record drops in prices coupled with burgeoning inventories are one reason, and they have the cash to take advantage of better buying conditions, more so than the primary home buyer which is a group largely populated by cash-strapped first-timers.

Twenty-eight percent of vacation-home buyers paid cash for their property, as did 35 percent of investment buyers.

Plus, investors and second home buyers aren't interested in short-term gains and plan to hold on to their properties from four to ten years (median) respectively.

Investment homes are $150,000, unchanged from 2006, while the price of vacation homes have dropped $5000 to $195,000.

Eight out of ten second home buyers believe it's a good time to buy real estate, and a majority plan to buy another property in the next two years.

So what does that tell you? People with more money are spending it on real estate.