"The top 1% is buying up all the real estate.”

[Wind Dancer]

8. I read another article recently...

from the NYT, too!

snip

With home prices down more than a third from their peak and the market swamped with foreclosures, large investors are salivating at the opportunity to buy perhaps thousands of homes at deep discounts and fill them with tenants. Nobody has ever tried this on such a large scale, and critics worry these new investors could face big challenges managing large portfolios of dispersed rental houses. Typically, landlords tend to be individuals or small firms that own just a handful of homes.

...

Waypoint executives say they can handle large volumes because they have developed computer systems that help them make quick buying decisions and manage renovations and rentals.

“We realized that there is a tremendous amount of brain damage around acquiring single-family homes, renovating them and renting them out,” said Colin Wiel, a Waypoint co-founder. “We think this is a huge opportunity and we are going to treat it like a factory and create a production line to do this.”

more at link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/business/investors-are-looking-to-buy-homes-by-the-thousands.html?pagewanted=all


It's quite a disturbing read!