Update from the Foreclosure-Based Economy 0
Outside investors scarf up properties.
As the metro housing market begins to rebound after a dizzying fall, investor-buyers like Fundamental REO are driving an outsize share of the activity. Their purchases help stabilize prices but also foster concerns about the longer-term effect of neighborhoods filled with bulk-purchased homes owned by out-of-state investors.
Last fall, investor-buyers accounted for 26 percent of all Georgia home purchases, according to research by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Once attended mainly by smaller mom-and-pop buyers, monthly county foreclosure auctions have — since last summer — been overrun by industrial-scale buyers with millions to spend.
Not good news.
I can’t find the links right now, probably because the stories have passed into the archives of my ex-local rag, but in Philadelphia, many vacant and dilapidated properties are owned by New York investment outfits who are just sitting on them. (Others, of course, are owned by the city, which got stuck with them when the owners disappeared, and by local citizens down on their luck.)
Remember, it’s the New York boys who got us into this mess with their phony securitized mortgage bags of air.
More at the link.
