aldante I think you need to broaden the scope of your irritation. Look… it is a rigged game man. You know that don’t you? Housing, stock market, you name it, there are simply many people who have achieved wealth and they will ALWAYS be in a better position to take advantage of thier spot in life. Some of them have earned it, some of them have it bestowed upon them.
Okay with regards to appraised values of housing…. yes you have every right to be angry. Appraisals are done ONLY based on the sales that the appraiser digs up. His first stop will be the MLS.. other then that? I don’t know. He could go through all the tax rolls but that is not a good use of his time. Let me ask you this… What amount loan mods and/or principal mods? Should not those be recorded events as well? In my book those events dictate a deterioration in value don’t they in yours?
So what can you do about it? Well you can scrounge up money and buy a home for cash at a trustee sale. You can join an investment club, go to sdcia meetings and see what they have there. You may be able to invest and at least get a good return on your money.
The bottom line is this. Nobody will EVER be able to get as good a deal as these investors do who buy in bulk. They buy in bulk and that is why they get such steep discounts. This is the BEST THING IN THE WORLD for distressed banks. Unloading the inventory and unwinding these non performing securities is the first of many steps. Once the property belongs to these investment groups they can spin em, flip em, rent em, or do whatever the hell they want. It is how we get to a more stable base like it or not.
The very fact that investors are jumping in now should actually raise the eyebrows of many bears because when these guys go in that is a significant change of scenery. Now the problem is that they have a good 30-40% price break built into the purchase which helps them. Does that mean you should wait for pricing to drop another 30-40%? Be my guest.
You need to play the hand you are dealt. What you are going to purchase and how it will appraise will have nothing to do with what these investors do. Those are the rules of the game and it does suck.