Yeah, they’d buy up portfolios in bulk from banks. They’d also contract out work to locals who would specialize in bulk buying in certain areas. There are many ways for institutions (if they so desire) to get into the residential market in a big way if prices were to drop significantly given the technology available.
Where do the jobs come from? Where do they always come from? Out of the blue. It’s as yet unknowable. The only thing we know is that they get created in places we didn’t anticipate. The problem with being a bear – and believe me, I know a lot about it – is that we tend to overestimate our level of certainty regarding things we think we’re sure about and underestimate the potential impact of exogenous surprises – things we don’t know about.
To use a recent example, many tech analysts thought the chip companies were going to die an ugly death once the PC market got saturated (which it is), but what happened? Ipods, HDTVs, and other products that use chips that were unanticipated. That’s how a dynamic economy works.
We know far less than we think we know. One way or another, innovation and resilience tend to mute the effects of “inevitable downturns”. Having said that, I still think we’re in for a doozy, just not as much of a doozy as purely “logical” analysis might suggest.
