When you talk about foreclosure , many get the vision of families being evicted from their homes and being forced to live in the spare rooms or living rooms of family and friends, or even seeking refuge in charity run shelters. However, the other side of foreclosure is that a huge slice of housing goes onto the auction block, much of it returning to “investors” and the banks that back them.
While foreclosures that make it to the auction block are selling in Dallas-Fort Worth for as low as 47 cents on the dollar, it’s not ordinary families who are finding deals on housing. Investors and “flippers”usually have first dibs on discounted housing because they have the cash to pay for it. What happens to those homes snapped up in foreclosure auctions? Many of them end up back with the bank or rented/sold at a profit. And nowadays, with the recession still raging on, there are many of these homes left empty after failing to sell at the foreclosure auction. That is why we have found ourselves facing swathes of barren communities replete with empty houses.
As the foreclosure prevention programs face the possibility of termination, we need to give an honest look at how we are approaching our housing crisis. Foreclosures are not keeping American communities stable and those who would purchase a foreclosure property are unable to do so because they don’t have the cash. But of course, that is not really the point. The point is that we do not and should not accept the massive amount of foreclosures we have right now. But our willingness to end foreclosure prevention programs with no viable replacement established, shows beyond a shadow of doubt that we have accepted the foreclosure crisis as the “new normal.”
(source: http://www.dallasnews.com/business/residential-real-estate/20110325-dallas-area-foreclosures-offer-bargains-but-few-can-take-advantage.ece )