ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

United States housing bubble

A housing bubble is when the prices of houses go up quickly and stay high for a long time. It happened in the United States from around 2000 to 2008. People started to buy houses because they thought prices would keep going up and that made prices go even higher. Eventually, prices got too high and people stopped buying houses. That made prices go down and many people lost their houses or a lot of money.