Others, like Nigel Swaby, a 36-year-old mortgage broker in Salt Lake City, are reluctant stock investors. Fearing the prices on two investment properties he owned in Salt Lake City could decline, he sold them in 2005 and invested the money in stocks.
Swaby wants to get back into real estate and has been hunting for homes to buy, but feels prices are still too inflated. "There aren't a ton of deals out there," he says. So his money sits in a high-yield savings account, a diversified stock mutual fund and four stocks: Procter & Gamble, Nortel Networks, Revlon and United Airlines. "I want a higher rate of return than a savings account, and stocks are it, until the real estate opportunity presents itself."