The rise and fall of real estate prices has become such a national obsession, the stats really ought to be carried on the sports pages. Small wonder, as the number of Americans buying investment property has boomed in recent years. But with double-digit price appreciation slowing or vanishing from many markets, the question has become, what's next? "The entire country has benefited from declining interest rates," said John Burns, an Irvine-Calif.-based real estate analyst. "But what's been very interesting in the recent cycles is that investor activity has driven a lot of the behavior." Despite talk of a national real estate bubble, housing sales and prices are local phenomenon driven by the trinity of local job growth, the supply of new homes and affordability, Burns said. Add in wild cards like climate, rapidly-changing demographics and investor activity and markets throughout the nation behave in idiosyncratic ways. Markets that are growing A varie...