Comments on: Your Neighbor is being foreclosed on but you don’t know it. 3 Identical Homes on the Same Street Telling us a Very Different Story Each. Real Homes of Genius – A $630,000 Foreclosure in Cerritos has a Neighboring Home Renting for $2,150. Or You Can Buy a Similar Home Today for $549,000.

By: InvestorEstates

InvestorEstates — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 16:14:57 +0000

Beware of Foreclosure Radar. Your $50/month will not net you very much. Most posts on the site are over a week AFTER the notices are posted at the county. Many auctions posted to their site are 2 or 3 days away, leaving you, the investor, little time to properly investigate a property’s condition (physical condition, liens on title, property tax status, etc…). You’d do better to get online at the county sites and research this yourself, check the free postings on the trustee websites, review newspaper classifieds (online too), or subscribe to a local abstract report that will get you the data on the next-day with no 2-week lag like Foreclosure Radar can have.

By: David

David — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 20:43:51 +0000

Even is “stable” value areas like houston, tx there is still distress selling, especially in the large homes. There are many 4000-6000 sq ft homes in major distress.

Where I like the 8000 sq ft mansions on golf courses that cost around $1M all go up for sale in major market corrections… 2000 and 2008. I think the people in those upper markets here are buying big but have no reserves so when they lose that $250K a year job they cannot afford their $1M house anymore.

That is what it seems.

By: Sabin Figaro

Sabin Figaro — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 00:26:41 +0000

@Nimesh
You hit the nail on the head with that particular observation, as John Cleese might have once said. I’m just a stupid engineer. I can’t find the formula for all this to work out in the long run. I wish one of the pundits could show me the algorithm.

By: Jade

Jade — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 20:35:29 +0000

I don’t know. I just bought my first home in Orlando. It was a REO and is 3014 sq feet for $125K and only 3 years old. You can’t possibly BUILD this house for less than $180K and it’s in good shape. It only needs some new carpet. Considering all, I think I did really well and no matter how people cry that the market is still crashing, I still think I am super lucky to own my dream home for a fraction of the cost of materials.

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 13:41:13 +0000

Large (20-30%) down payments have no bearing on the affordability of a home. You may lower your monthly payment, but you have parted with a substantial amount of principal money that could be earning a return elsewhere. Housing purchases make sense in an appreciating environment, but in an uncertain environment like ours don’t go for it, and don’t get brainwashed by the conventional wisdom (of people who got us into this mess in the first place) that says now is a good time to buy. By what reasonable measure? The fundamentals of the economy in California (and the US) are still terrible, and housing prices still have room to fall. Think it can’t go down further? Did you expect prices to be as low as they currently are in 2010? They can fall further and folks, they will. You don’t need to own to live in the neighborhood of your choice, you can still rent there. If you can afford to own there you can afford to rent there.

The financial/realtor establishment knows that psychology and emotion underlies a recovery: if you make people believe that things are stabilizing/getting better, and now is a great time to buy, then people will act. Nothing wrong with positive action unless it’s based on false hope. Folks, everyone is spreading false hope today. This is not pessimism, this is reality. The fundamentals simply do not bear what the establishment wants you to believe. Protect yourself in this great recession, no one else is looking out for you.