subject: Assessing And Predicting How Investors Might Benefit From California Foreclosures Efficiently [print this page] Understanding how investors might benefit from California foreclosures in the future over in the Golden State of California will be important for anybody who's considering getting back into the real estate markets, either as a home buyer or as a real estate speculator. For sure, many of the problems experienced out in California when it comes to foreclosures was due to speculation, but that's another question for another day.
Anybody who's thinking on investing and what sort of potential might actually show itself out in California might look at the rate of CA foreclosures and think that there probably isn't too much that can be done. Many real estate experts chalk up what went on out in the Golden State to a fair amount of real estate speculation that occurred even among normal folks selling or buying homes.
Basically, there were great numbers of sellers and buyers who are gambling that they could play in the real estate market through their homes before any inevitable correction occurred and caught them out before they could take their profits. In effect, they stopped looking at their homes as places to live but instead looked at them like investment vehicles that they could leverage, wrongly as it turned out.
Leveraging simply means that one takes on debt in order to acquire an asset that might return a significant reward at some point in the near or far future. These people took on mortgages for homes that they probably couldn't afford, all on the expectation that the homes would soon increase steeply in value. Lax lending and easy-to-get mortgages helped to contribute to the problem.
This phenomenon was in great evidence out in the Golden State, where even people like fast food clerks were qualifying for homes that they never would've been close to qualifying for under normal lending standards. However, exotic loan packages soon became the norm, and these people were able to get into homes while paying only the interest rate on the loan at first.
It was working for a while, and many people were able to buy a half-million dollar home, for example, and then sell it a year or two later for 20 to 30% more than what they paid for it and well before monthly payments increased drastically. Now, however, many of these homes are sitting unsold and foreclosed upon because the real estate market doesn't have enough buyers for the supply of homes available.
An investor, however, who might be considering looking at foreclosed properties or the real estate market in general out in California needs to understand that it's going to require a tolerance for risk and also a longer view been used to be the norm. Add in that most will need stronger cash reserves than in the past and those who can meet these criteria might actually be able to do something with these homes.
CA foreclosures have stung the Golden State hard of late, and the fact that the state was never very good at managing property tax revenue due to certain public initiatives has also hit it with some appreciable impact. However, a smart and savvy investor willing to get into the market at its bottom and then ride a building way to the top may be able to do something, even in California.
