Is This The Norm?
I'm finding that most of the foreclosures in my area don't have a lot of equity in the properties. It seems that most of the people defaulting have only had their mortgages for a year or so. Are a lot of you finding this situation and are these properties not viable for our purposes here??
You might want to participate on the shortsale forum which may be an ideal acquisition technique for the inventory you describe.
Many people live pay check to pay check.
When there's equity in their home they continue to refinance and/or put second mortages on the property. If they can, they will roll the financing cost into the loan. In many cases the property is "upside down" without any equity.
When some crisis hit (divorce, unemployment, illness, mismanagement,etc,etc,) they are in big trouble.
This is the time to see if the lenders want to play Monte Hall's game, "Let's make a deal".
This is when one man's lemon becomes our lemonade.