OK, the average Jack or Jill who needs to take out mortgage in order to buy a house isn't yet an endangered species.

But if present trends continue, cash buyers could very well soon make up half the market or more here in Massachusetts for condos and a good chunk of the single-family home market.

Investors and foreign buyers are helping lead the charge - check out this Globe piece on an influx of nouveau riche buyers from China and other countries from across the planet.

With rents of $1,500 and up, the new breed of micro units taking shape on Boston's waterfront certainly look hip, but they can hardly be called affordable.

And that would seem to defeat the whole point of the tiny, 350 square foot units, taking shape in Boston's Innovation District, formerly known as the Seaport.

After all, they were supposed to provide relatively affordable digs for young entrepreneurs and recent graduates looking to set up shop in Boston.

Yet for $1,500 a month, you could buy a nice-sized condo in a town like Natick and be in town in half hour. Or team up with a roommate and get a full-sized apartment in the city.

That's a lot of money for someone just starting out.

I am sure you can come up with even better examples - you get the idea.

Well for now, you can forget about seeing a flood of these units hitting the market in Boston, with city officials putting the brakes on this new trend.

The housing market is abuzz with speculation that rising interest rates will tame increasingly runaway housing prices.

After all, rates are already creeping up from rock-bottom historic lows in anticipation of the Fed easing back from its multitrillion-dollar rate manipulations.

But Calculated Risk's Bill McBride just took a sledgehammer to that argument.

Massachusetts home prices are now accelerating at a double-digit rate.

And given the reputation of our state and especially Greater Boston as one of the most expensive places in the world to live, that is not very good news.

The Bay State's median home price leaped 12 percent in May, to $324,000, The Warren Group reports.

And, no, this is not an anomaly. Instead, it's the fourth straight month of double-digit price increases.

Both home prices and rents rose sharply again in May across Greater Boston, online real estate portal Zillow reports.

Home prices rose 5.4 percent, led by some of the usual suspects, Boston, Cambridge and Brookline, and, in a bit of a surprise, Revere.

That comes on the heels of reports that condo and multifamily prices are soaring in Everett as Las Vegas titan Steve Wynn forges ahead with his casino plan.

Who knows, maybe Revere is benefiting from all the real estate speculation stirred by the casino proposal - Revere is next door to a rival gambling mega project being pushed by Suffolk Downs.

Revere home values are up nearly 10 percent over 2012, to a median price of just over $247,000.

It's not as if buyers didn't already have it tough in Greater Boston's listings-starved market.

Well now here's another way buyers are getting chiseled in what is now officially a sellers' market.

A growing number of listings aren't even being advertised publicly or put on the MLS system for brokers and others to look at.

These so-called "pocket listings" are an emerging black market in real estate, with enterprising - maybe overly so - brokers looking to get the listing before it goes to market and privately line up a buyer ready to pay whatever it takes.

Cambridge, Davis Square and now Everett?

OK, the hipsters aren't flocking to Everett just yet, but condo prices are going through the roof.

This Globe piece theorizes that Steve Wynn's $1.2 billion casino proposal for a derelict old industrial site along the Mystic River is stirring fevered speculation in both residential and commercial real estate.

Wynn holds all the cards right now, with a casino referendum set for Saturday in Everett - and no serious opponents, are at least those with money to get their message out - to speak of.

The king of Las Vegas still has to win the nod of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission - hardly a sure thing given competition from Caesars and a group of high-powered business folks over at Suffolk Downs - but why spoil the party?

Apparently, some buyers, and more likely investors, are already uncorking the champagne.

If you want to live inside 128, you are likely to have to settle for less space. The question is whether you can do it and not feel space starved, especially if you have moved from another part of the country with more spacious - and far less expensive - homes.

I'm fine with my 1,800-square-foot village colonial in Natick, but in many other parts of the country I would be slumming it. (The real estate sites, Zillow, Trulia and so forth, say I have 2,100 square feet and three bathrooms - that's news to me!)

But unless you are ready to spend $900,000 if not a million or more, you can forget about that spanking new 4,000 square foot home on a one acre lot, at least if you want to get inside 128.

And we are not just talking about super upscale towns in the western suburbs.

Downtown Boston has become a playground for the rich, dominated by luxury condo towers with multimillion-dollar units.

The median price for a luxury condo in neighborhoods like the Back Bay, South End and Beacon Hill hit $1.4 million during the first three months of the year.

That's a phenomenal 22.7 percent increase over 2012, according to LINK numbers cited in this Globe piece.

Well it's all part of a global phenomenon that threatens to turn the world's top cities into "gated citadels," British author Simon Kuper warns in the Financial Times.

Global cities are turning into vast gated communities where the one per cent reproduces itself. Elite members don't live there for their jobs. They work virtually anyway. Rather, global cities are where they network with each other, and put their kids through their country's best schools.

Housing starts are on the upswing across the country, with a fresh batch of good news due out Tuesday from the feds.

But here in Massachusetts, construction of new, single-family homes has fallen to anemic levels not seen in decades, with no signs of a major uptick in the horizon.

And given the onward march of home prices across the Boston area, that's hardly good news.That is unless you think supply and demand just don't matter when it comes to housing prices.

Heck, if you own a multimillion-dollar Back Bay mansion, what's another half a million or more for a pair of extra parking spaces?

Well actually $560,000 for a pair of weed fringed spaces behind 298 Commonwealth Ave.

Check out this Globe story about the auction for the parking spots, won by a buyer who owns a $5.8 million home on Commonwealth Avenue and wanted some extra spaces for when guests come over.

Sounds like a lot, especially given the fact you have the Boston Common Garage nearby. It may not win any award for aesthetics, but at $18 for three hours, it's a bargain!

A nurse at a Boston hospital, Brittany wants to buy a condo but can't find a decent unit worth putting money down on.

At this point, she's all but resigned herself to renting for another year.

"If you like a place, you had better have an offer on it or it will be off the market tomorrow," Brittany told me in a recent interview. "You don't have a second to think."

No, she's not looking in Cambridge, Davis Square or Arlington.

Instead, she's looking in Natick.

OK, we all know it's tough to find a condo in the hipster zones of Cambridge and Somerville.

But for condo buyers in the suburbs, it's not easy right now either.

OK, when Realtors start talking about the market reaching a "tipping point," it can only be bad news for buyers worried about soaring prices.

It means things are starting to get a little crazy.

As we head into summer, sales activity is soaring, with buyers spooked by rising rates and the prospect of more price hikes ahead.

Boston is now one of the most competitive home sales markets in the country, moving up to No. 5, Redfin reports this morning.

That's up from No. 7 in April and suggests this summer will be long, hot and busy for both buyers and sellers.

Greater Boston is more competitive now than Seattle and Washington, D.C., behind only San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and Orange County.

So what does "competitive" mean?

A reader and prospective home buyer, Katherine is wondering whether the real estate market will slow down now that summer is here.

In particular, she's worried that all the good homes were snapped before Memorial Day and new listings may start to dwindle.

Here's Katherine:

I was wondering if you could post something about Memorial Day weekend listings. I have noticed that a ton of homes that were on the market for a while (well not very long in this market but longer than a week) are being listed as pending this week and I had heard that after Memorial Day Weekend the home listings dwindle. In an already low inventory year, I imagine people may be extra stressed about the lack of homes so they are scooping up what's left. I was wondering if there is any truth to this or is it just the rumors that I have been heard. I was just curious was general market trends are after Memorial Day weekend in terms of listings- do they typically drop?

Boston-area rents rose more than 5 percent in May, more than double the national pace.

It's enough to make Greater Boston the fifth least affordable rental market in the country, behind only the likes of New York, Miami, San Francisco and Los Angeles, Trulia reports.

In terms of the pace of rent increases, Boston is No. 2 in the country right now, second only to Miami, which saw a 6.4 percent hike in May compared to the same month the year before.

So exactly how unaffordable have our local rents become?

There's speculation galore now about how steadily rising interest rates could cool the housing market.

But before the chill sets in, sales could very well go into overdrive as buyers seek to lock in rock-bottom rates before they are gone.

Interest rates have just topped 4 percent. OK, that's still incredibly low, but up sharply from 3.4 percent at the beginning of May.

If you doubt the power of the herd mentality to drive sales and prices in the real estate market, just recall what happened back during the nutty spring of 2010 as the expiration of the home buyer tax credit loomed.

Buyers bid up prices on homes in a scramble to grab the seemingly free government money before the offer expired, often negating the value of the $8,000 credit.

Could we see some panic buying over the summer if rates keep pushing up?

Don't bet against it.

Oh my, how things have changed!

A couple years ago, sellers were ready to do just about anything to move their home, with some desperate enough to pitch in on closing costs or throw in a free Hawaiian vacation.

But with the Fed inflating the market again with its multitrillion-dollar monetary manipulations, selling is now the easy part. (Here's an interesting Forbes piece that looks at the new housing bubble that's taking shape.)

The problem is, once you've sold in this fast inflating market, you are suddenly out there with all the other chumps bidding against each other for a limited pool of decent homes.

Sure, you may be able to sell and even get a price you would not have thought possible a couple years ago, but will you truly be able to move up to a bigger home in the same town?

If you are struggling to come up with tens of thousands of dollars down in order to buy a house, you are not alone.

Down-payment requirements are easing across the country, but they are still hefty here in Massachusetts.

When it comes to down payments, our state has the fourth highest average. If you want to get into a home here in the Bay State, you will likely have fork over more than 18 percent up front, according to a new LendingTree survey.

Only New Jersey, at 20 percent down, and New York and California, at just over 19 percent, has higher average down payment requirements.

There has got to be some sick joke here - after all, these are also all the states with the highest real estate prices. And, for that matter, the lowest foreclosure rates. Yet not only does it cost more to buy a house in Massachusetts and other high-priced Northeast markets, but it costs more up front. Much more.

If you are selling a home in this tight market, get ready to be hit up with a personal appeal from a buyer, complete with photos of smiling children and adorable pets.

What to do? Well, actually, it's easy: Head directly to the circular file and don't look back. Guilt is for suckers.

With not a lot of homes to choose from, buyers are pulling out all the stops when they find something half decent. That means trying to personalize their bids and gain an edge.

But when it comes to buyers, the only thing you should care about is what they offer for your house and what's in their bank accounts, not how wonderful their families are or how much they will enjoy your home after you have moved on.

It's all about the money, and that's OK.