What I hate is the idea that all these “investors” will run out and snap up the affordable properties before the wannabe homeowners can, then rent them right back to those same people who wanted to buy in the first place. In other words, force people to be renters against their wishes.

Don’t worry about it — once those “investors” snap up all of the “great deals” and turn them into rentals, guess what, the supply of rentals goes up which of course pushes the price of renting down. These wannabe Donald Trumps will be chasing each other to the bottom in an effort to attract renters — this is especially true of all of the foreclosure stock which is currently withheld from the rental market. In places where there is significant oversupply (downtown SD comes to mind), it is going to be a renter’s paradise for some time to come. I say to those genius investors — “we’ve hit bottom! there’s never been a better time to buy rental properties.”