well, if you can repair them so your total cost is less than $100,000 and you can rent them out for, say, $800/month, you have/should have cash flow.

David! I just looked on Yahoo! Real Estate, and the cheapest place for rent was $850, with some up to $1200. In fact, some of the $1200 places are *apartments.* A home would get more, wouldn’t it?

http://realestate.yahoo.com/California/Pittsburg/Apartments_for_rent

Seems like the time is ripe for purchasing a place – even you, Mr. Low’n'Slow Is The Way To Go, must agree, yes?

Remember, those photos might not be current. Many (many!) of the REOs I’ve looked at are in significantly worse shape than the photos. At the very least, do a drive by.

(First of all, apologies if this is a duplicate. My ‘puter crashed in the middle of an earlier response.)

So, David! I searched on Yahoo and there are lots of apartments – not even houses, but apartments! – for rent in the $1,000 range. I would peg the average around $900 even!

http://realestate.yahoo.com/California/Pittsburg/Apartments_for_rent/result.html;_ylt=AqC99jJDk3i_JyJD6lrxPdukF7kF?typeBak=realestate&p=Pittsburg%2C+CA&type=rental&priceLow=&priceHigh=&bedroomLow=&bathroomLow=&search=Searchredir=0&redir=1

So maybe even you, David, Mr. Low-n-Slow Is The Way To Go, think it’s time to buy a place, fix it up and rent it out?

Really, K. Eaton! I’m so glad you weighed in and will remember this in future posts. I’d love to hear more about your experiences with REOs. Are you representing yourself, or do you have an agent?

If I had the capital and time to be a landlord, yeah, it’s looking like a good time to buy some of those houses.

Right now all my capital is tied up in fixing up my own house…and perhaps in buying a different business for less money and hopefully equal cash flow to a house/landlord.

Or the last shoe to drop would be that the rents would drop at some point. It is hard to believe that the rental market would not be affected in a place with so many REO properties on the market.

My guess is that people are worried that some of these developments will be ghost towns now that gas prices are so high. Yes it is close to BART but how many people can and would want to commute 40 minutes each way.

rents can drop, but even last time rents dropped around 10%

SF Buyer, I totally agree with you. In fact, I believe that the burbs will all be ghost towns by 2018, no lie. Only the areas close to BART and downtown will be populated.

But there is a Pittsburg/Bay Point BART, yes? So a house there could be a good investment. I agree with David, even if rents drop 10 percent, if you buy an $80K house, what is your monthly mortgage/homeowners insurance/property tax payment going to be with 5.5% interest? Like, maybe $800? Surely you could get at least $950 a month to rent a house?

I think you can “rent” in Pittsburg without paying anything! Look at the Google street view for the Cutter St. property and pan up and down the street! Most of the houses are boarded up! Great place to live out your post-apocalyptic dreams!

Hahahahaha that’s great! Which post-apocalyptic vision shall we choose – Mad Max was always a favorite of mine. Let’s start the Squatblog, or as another Redfin reader put it, “Why rent when you can squat?”

Man, I’m getting scared. What if the government can’t bail us out of this huge catastrophe and we all lose all the money we have in the bank?

I think it’s unlikely that any FDIC insured deposits would ever fail to be honored. In the event the FDIC funds run out, they would probably be replenished by a Treasury loan. However, I do think it’s quite likely that we will hear stories of people who temporarily lost access to their funds while accounting matters were resolved.

I had a bad experience once when the bank I was using at the time was acquired by a larger bank and I lost access to my money for a few weeks due to a “glitch in the database changeover”. Now I keep accounts at three different banks (why not, accounts are free).

Also, don’t forget that there are also brokerage account funds which are covered by SIPC, bonds backed by the issuer, stocks which legally belong to you and are tied to corporate assets, etc. Nobody should have a problem finding a diverse array of places to stash their money if doing so makes them feel more comfortable.

Meanwhile, let me know if you see people lining up at the next failed bank, waiting for hours to pull out their money. I’ll be sure to drive by and laugh.

Wow, Brandon, I’m thinking of doing a post based on all these great ideas you are sharing. What I am thinking is, and *please* correct me if I am clueless here, that it might not be a bad idea right now to open an account in more than one bank? In case you need money to tide you over should one or the other fail, so you won’t lose access to your money while accounting matters are resolved?

What if you have investments with a company like The Reserve, Riversource or Wachovia, all of which have considerable exposure to Lehman debt? Would it be a good idea to pull out? Or is that panicking?

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Thanks for posting these useful information. Keep them coming

Any idea if there are similar blogs like this related to read?