Research, procrastination and rubber-neck syndrome led your reporter to the website of Gary Watts, the Mission Viejo realtor who became to go-to source for anyone who wanted to justify their impulse to buy-buy-buy real estate in the mid-2000s. The Register quoted the guy in seemingly every real-estate prediction story in 2005, which allowed him to appear prescient by predicting home prices would only ever move in one direction -- up -- until, well, they didn't. He called big gains in 2006
