The conversation that is going around the real estate industry water cooler is, "Are we in the bubble in the Bay Area and when is it going to burst?" Are Newark residents now playing poker with their mortgages? Instead of giving my opinion, I have gathered some of the top minds in the real estate world and asked them "is the Bay Area real estate bubble real?" "This is not a bubble," says Chris Thornberg, an economist in Los Angeles. "The money flooding the Bay Area isn't built on speculation like the last boom.