[quote=CONCHO]The banks aren’t gonna list those REOs until they are forced to. And guess what, they aren’t going to be forced to because their buddies in the government will keep shovelling OUR money THEIR way. Essentially we have a sort of Soviet system now where the government is paying for housing. Why move out or pay your mortgage when the bank won’t kick you out? Dammit if I knew then what I know now I would have:

1) Bought as many houses as possible with as many crazy loans as I could have gotten.

2) Flipped as many as I could have and used the proceeds to buy some real property in cash out of the country somewhere.

3) Stayed in the nicest, most expensive and hardest-to-sell one here in SD.

4) Stopped making payments on it in 2008.

Hell I’m sure they wouldn’t have kicked me out by now. I’d probably have a couple of more years scot-free there until the sheriff showed up. By then I would have saved a BUNDLE and I’d shuffle off to my foreign retreat.

What sickens me most is the knowledge that quite a few people have done what I just described, AND THEY’RE GOING TO GET AWAY WITH IT with our government’s help. AAAARRRRGH!

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I agree with CC. I have seen people doing similar things although on a smaller scale. In our complex, one investor stopped paying HOA fees about two years ago, knowing that in a down market, there is nothing we can do. Eventually he also stopped paying his mortgages while collecting rents from tenants. He is waiting on his bailout because he is “in distress” now.

Do you remember the saying in stock market that “do not fight the FED”? Currently they (FED and Gov.) are doing everything possible begging people to take the money and buy. People are just being “patriotic”, buying and spending like there is no tomorrow. I think people are smarter than what we give them credit for.