No longer is the chit-chat associated with attending a cocktail party just along the lines of “who’s had work done”, “who’s sending little Bobby off to boarding school”, or “How about those (insert local sports team here)?”

The new hot topic — real estate.

Jonathan Miller, executive vice president and director of research for Radar Logic, a data and analytics business that produces a daily “spot” price for residential real estate in major U.S. metropolitan areas, said the woes in the real estate market are all the rage.

Miller, speaking on Tuesday at the Reuters Housing Summit in New York, said the concerns about the market are many and very real.

While Miller warned in his session that the worst might be yet to come in the bursting of the real estate bubble, he’s not sure that all the parties saw this one coming as the crisis it has become.

Miller was one of the first guests of the summit, which runs through Friday in Reuters New York headquarters.