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A Sucker Is Born Every Minute

If you are heading to the next foreclosure auction you would do yourself a favor by taking what little money you have and giving it away. The only people getting rich in foreclosure are these so called foreclosure experts selling homes on television for $70,000.

Just think about it. If the median price home in your state is $200,000 then what can you get for $70,000 dollars? The answer is quite clear, a shack, an empty shell and four walls...no sinks, no toilets, no bath bubs, no plumbing, no water tank no heater and certainly no windows. You get four walls, many of which have had major holes pounded into the plaster by evicted hostile former owners who went out of their way to destroy the property.

Any savings in a foreclosure immediately evaporate when you need to spend $100,000 just to make the property livable. And if you are really the unlucky buyer you might even discover an undisclosed second mortgage or mechanics lean. Ask yourself this question. Do I have the money to buy the property and where will the money come from to bring the property up to the standards necessary to rent or resale? You already know the answer, that the warm and fuzzy feeling of buying something at 30 to 40 percent of its value quickly disappears when the money you just saved goes back into the money pit, a house needing major repairs.

Worth thinking about, some banks and mortgage companies who have repossessed properties in foreclosures will not make new loans on houses that have been stripped of their content. Ah! but there are hard money lenders, you know those guys that gladly give you the month at 8 to 10 percent over price. It is sort of like loan sharking.

Homeowners who destroy their property in foreclosure should be sent to jail, but our liberal politicians and courts believe that personal property rights allow owners to destroy what they can no longer afford to pay for. It is a clear sign that capitalism and the judicial system are running amok.

I know of some cases in which former owners had parties on the eve of their evictions in which they invite their friends to bring hammers and chain saws to break through plaster walls just for the fun of it. Such criminal destruction of property should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And until we do, these crimes will continue. A $70,000 bargain is not such a bargain if you need to put $150,000 into repairs.

The barkers on these foreclosure shows never tell you that most of these properties are dogs, real dogs. Do you want to own a house in a neighborhood surrounded by drug dealers and empty houses growing marijuana inside? How safe is your investment if it is surrounded by gangs, former prison inmates, and registered rapists? Then why would you be convinced that this $70,000 property is such a bargain? Or are you like many buyers who are just planning to do the minimum amount of repairs so they can make a killing by pawning it off on some other poor sucker? Unfortunately our American society has evolved into this ugly Brave New World.

If you are convinced by television infomercials that anyone can instantly gain riches and the technical skills of investing in risky real estate you are dumber than dirt. Americans are currently discovering that the vast majority of people do not have a clue what they are signing when purchasing a home... the subprime mortgage meltdown reveals this lack of knowledge. Believing now that these same buyers are investment gurus capable of wrestling property deals away from the big boys are out of touch with reality. The high rollers of real estate investment buy all the good property on the foreclosure market. What usually ends up on the auction block are the dogs!

Do not get snagged by the hype being fed to the general public by television commercials produced by the same scam artists that hyped people into believing they could afford to buy a house with no money down and refinance it when the prices went higher. The sleazy get rich quick scam artists are the ones making millions, stupid!

I watch these foreclosure auctions and my immediate thought is about B. T. Barnum, the famous man of the circus who once said: A sucker is born every minute. And the people in the audience are ripe for the picking.

Under the glaring lights of the television cameras and the smooth tongue auctioneer plus the barkers running up and down the aisles in their tuxedos screaming Buy!, Buy, Buy, this is nothing more than the 21st century equivalent of selling snake oil.

Buyers beware.

Seed Newsvine

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