Thread: Landlords find deals in housing crisis

The Best Places to Buy Foreclosed Homes
In Cities With Stabilizing Markets, Foreclosed Homes Might Be a Good Investment

By MATT WOOLSEY AND JON BRUNER
Forbes.com
March 28, 2008—


Only today's bravest buyers would consider homes in cities like Las Vegas and Tampa, where rampant foreclosures are sinking already weak real estate markets.

But in markets in other cities, where there are hints of stabilization, foreclosed properties might be a good investment.

You'll find such spots in the Sunbelt, home to Charlotte, N.C., Raleigh, N.C., Oklahoma City, San Antonio, and Albuquerque, N.M. These five cities topped our list of Best Places To Buy Foreclosed Homes.

Click here to learn more about the best places to find foreclosed homes at our partner site, Forbes.com.

To compile our list, we started with the country's 100 largest metro areas and ranked them by annual foreclosure rate, based on data from RealtyTrac, a listing firm that tracks foreclosures. To give a sense of scale, hard-hit markets have foreclosure rates in the 3% or 4% range. Riverside, Calif., has a foreclosure rate of 3.8%, and Detroit has a foreclosure rate of 4.9%. By contrast, Seattle, has a foreclosure rate of 0.4%, and Austin, Texas, has a rate of 0.8%, two figures which are within a healthy range for foreclosures, as all markets, at all times, have them.

Our goal was to differentiate inexpensive foreclosure markets from those that are undervalued, as cheap foreclosures in flimsy markets don't necessarily make strong investments. One can score a deal on a house in Detroit, for example, but there are long odds on recouping costs due to the area's current economic environment and that housing market's depression. If Detroit were adding jobs, or were a more hospitable location for business, it could be a good comeback play. But as it stands, it's not a housing market where you want any amount of your money.

Only cities on Forbes' best places list, which measures criteria such as quality of life and the local economy (labor and energy costs, the regulatory environment, taxes) to find markets, such as Raleigh, N.C., or Oklahoma City, where foreclosures aren't symptomatic of local economic ruin, were measured.

Then, we looked at how real estate prices have moved since 2006, based on data from Moody's Economy.com. No city has seen massive median price jumps, but making a foreclosure buy in San Antonio, where prices grew 8.24% between 2006 and 2007, carries far less risk than Sacramento, where prices dropped approximately 10% over that same time period.

What's happening to home prices in your community? Weigh in. Add your thoughts in the Reader Comments section below.

Next, we looked at the spread between median prices and foreclosure prices, with data supplied by RealtyTrac, to determine where banks and sellers were offering the largest discounts on foreclosed properties. Stubborn sellers looking for full value aren't as helpful to a bargain hunter as sellers willing to make a short sale--where the home is sold for under the outstanding loan value--in order to unload a property quickly.

By this measure, Charlotte, N.C., performs very well. Foreclosure prices are 28% below median prices, for an average savings of $56,874. Not bad in a market where the median sales price is $147,299.

Foreclosures and real-estate-owned properties are available through local listing agents, though the most comprehensive databases are found in the online depositories of companies like RealtyTrac.

Taken from Dailykos:


Congratulations! You know those hard earned tax dollars of yours, the tax dollars that BushCo decided a couple of weeks ago were best spent to bail out the irresponsible investment bankers on Wall Street, instead of letting them fall flat on their asses while free market capitalism belts out an appropriate punishment to those clowns? (You know, the way that we have always been told that "the system" is supposed to work when it has been abused?)

Your generous donation has enabled a guy who should, at this very moment, be as completely and totally financially bankrupt as his immortal soul is, to pocket about a cool $62 million dollars. He never missed one pricy meal, baby. Talk about laughing all the way to the bank. Talk about (excuse screaming, please) CORPORATE WELFARE PROGRAMS.

Yep, our tax dollars made it all possible for James Cayne to take lemons and make lemonade, a whole lot of it. And all of this while Rome burns.

This from tonight’s AP:

Top News Archive - Yahoo! Finance...

Bear Stearns Cos. Chairman James Cayne on Thursday sold his holdings in the embattled investment bank ahead of its expected acquisition by JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Cayne sold 5.66 million shares for exactly $10.84 a share for $61.3 million.
As the NY Post reported a couple of days ago, the newly obscenely enriched Cayne has recently hired a bodyguard:

Breaking News | Headline News | Current - New York Post...

Anger has reverberated all week throughout the gloomy Madison Avenue offices, where dethroned chief Jimmy Cayne has walked around with an armed bodyguard. Starting Monday, when embittered and dazed employees arrived for their first day of work since learning their firm blew up along with the company piggy bank, Cayne's armed hulk of a bodyguard trailed him everywhere and parked himself outside Cayne's office all day, sources said. Some employees say they're furious at the 74-year-old Cayne for going to bridge tournaments during the week the firm crumbled. Cayne is said to be quietly helping British shareholder, Joe Lewis, drum up another suitor for the firm at a much higher price than Dimon's bargain basement deal as low as $2 a share.
One has to wonder how "embittered and dazed" those employees will be tomorrow morning. I’d be amazed if Jimmy doesn’t request some sort of "work from home" accommodations starting, like, immediately.

This is appalling beyond words. Our tax dollars give Cayne and his company an undeserved second chance and the first thing the guy does, besides playing bridge for a week, is find a way to hike up his worthless shares so that when he finally cashes in, he’s getting multiple times as much money for something that is essentially worth nothing.

I don’t know about Cayne’s employees, but I myself am waaaayyyy beyond "embittered" at this point. These guys think that they are going to get away with completely destroying the integrity of our financial system and then running off with whatever may be left of our childrens' future. And you know what? They probably will.

Ummm....OK, I guess I won't buy.

Originally Posted by min0 lee

Ummm....OK, I guess I won't buy.

Nvm, I'll just make it a new post.