“Wow, you mean they would rather “pay” $8,000 instead of lowering the price by $8,000?”
“This is such a messed up market. There is so much manipulation and fraud out there, it makes me not want to participate at all.”
– I agree there is a tremendous amount of fraud in the market but I don’t see this as an example. Homebuilders do this kind of thing all the time to protect the price of their unbuilt inventory. Given the laws in California, the banks could essentially own any house with a loan on it at any time worth pennies on the dollar. Who cares what they do with their collateral they paid for it a couple of times over anyway. In any case they may have won a few battles but they are losing the war. Prices are still dropping and in prime areas.
– My mother rents a farm in Indiana. When she took bids for rent she asked for sealed bids. Why? The reason is that several farmers in the area gave bids that were essentially something like “I’ll pay 1$ an acre more than the highest bid”. She did not think that was fair and she was also afraid that if word got out that nobody would bid if they know the game was rigged. It turns out the bids for the most part were fairly close together and yes the highest bidder got to rent the land and was happy to so it at the price he offered. Some people were disappointed that they didn’t get the winning bid but they said they would bid again in the future. If a seller has something that many buyers would like to have this is a reasonable way to do business.
