Absentee buyers snap up single-family homes
One phrase sums up the current Bay Area home-buying experience: "We were beat out by a deep-pocketed investor." Around the region, absentee buyers are muscling out the competition by ponying up all cash for investment homes. These real estate investors range from the new kids on the block - brand-new companies backed with serious Wall Street money - to contractors rehabbing "handyman specials" and retirees augmenting their nest eggs. While some are in the market to "fix and flip," increasingly investors have been buying single-family homes and condos to "hold and rent." Simple economics lured them. Post-downturn, houses are cheaper than they've been in years. At the same time, droves of folks need places to rent, because either they've lost their homes to foreclosure, they can't meet newly strict lending standards or their job situation is precarious. "Investors looked at the numbers and saw it's clearly a good financia...