Surveyor – I agree with you and Stan. That the foreclosure tidal wave will add a substantial supply of tenants that will increase rental demand thereby pushing rental rates up. I do not think that the increased supply of REO properties will get bought up immediately, nor do I think that even if they do get bought up at discounts, that they will pencil out as rentals. Perhaps with enough down… but there are so many better rental markets in places like North Carolina and that area in general most smart money (with respect to rentals) left Cali a long time ago and will not return for a few more years. So I do not foresee a decrease in rents either. My post in essence was an agreement with Stan (about rents increasing)kind of questioning bsrs (well thought out, but definitely debateable) post.
bsr good question… indeed who will live in these homes. Well I am not sure. That would be a good question for those people who purchased REO properties Saturday at the auction. One thing that is crucial for steeper declines is for REO properties to NOT GET PURCHASED. So when they get slurped up that is not good for the bigtime bears. Who is buying them? Don’t know man…
Also your statement, “millions of ex-owners” … well yeah that is true but I don’t focus on nationwide numbers and I caution anyone from doing so.. focus on San Diego, (or at least I do as that is where I live)… so the question really becomes what is happening to the thousands of properties. I think there were what… a few hundred on auction this weekend yeah? Interesting to know how many of them went…As far as the lending climate goes… I get very concerned when I see prognistications about that climate from anyone except Pasadena Broker or HLS. The fact is that many people are having a hard time getting loans but that is because of the secondary market crunch, not because they do not qualify.
Finally what we do NOT WANT is for the housing slump to be politicized. I have posted ad nauseum about this. bsr if Hillary or Obama picks up this football and promises the sheeple that they will own homes with a chicken in every pot I can see big problems for the bears. It is call take yours and my tax money and ship it to Fanny and Freddie so they can buy crap loans so that Mary the 50k a year single mom can buy a new home for 600k that is now under the new conforming loan limit.
DDM you could very well be right that in the past lenders became landlords. I suppose that could happen now, but again I think that this is a very different age and that the secondary market is a much different place then when the S&L’s went belly up. Again, I am far from and expert so if the underlying security does not have any restrictions on the home becoming a rental then so be it. Again, it is all a REALLY clouding situation because the value of all these funds now is so screwed up that really nobody knows what they are worth. The bottom line is that when they have margin calls whether the home is a foreclosure or a rental they have to deal with it… So do all these foreclosures become rentals? Perhaps they do… I don’t see it but stranger things have happened. So far based on the auctions we have seen, the lenders are choosing to sell them off…
