As Housing Markets Recover, Wall Street Beats Families To Homes
PHOENIX — By the values that have long governed American housing, Megan and Danny Gilbertson are precisely the sorts of people who are supposed to now be buying a home.
They have good credit, steady jobs and decades worth of earning potential ahead of them, but not a lot of money for a down payment. Recently married, they are eager to leave a cramped apartment for a home of their own in a revitalized neighborhood here, a few miles from downtown and recently populated with coffee shops, hip restaurants and young parents pushing strollers.
Many parts of Phoenix have in recent years been besieged by foreclosure and abandonment, and the Gilbertsons seem like prime candidates to join in the revival. They want to capitalize on historically low interest rates, and prices that they perceive to be a bargain.
But in the year since the couple first started their search for a home, they have found mostly bewilderment and exasperation, along with an unwanted lesson about the odd workings of a suddenly hot American housing market: Despite the headlines suggesting that housing is returning to normal, the Gilbertsons have discovered that homes are scarce, competition is fierce and much of the buying is dominated by funds financed by Wall Street and other out-of-town investors.
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investors paying cash?..could be…
Examples of Money Laundering Investigations – Fiscal Year 2012
http://www.irs.gov/…/Examples-of-Money-Laundering-Investigations-Fiscal-Y…
Montfort stated she used the money to pay her bills, travel, pay her daughter’s … Once the cash had changed hands, Neal arrived to take possession of the 25 … Moreover, during a November 2007 search at Neal’s home, IRS and DEA agents …
I’ve mentioned it before but my house and about 30 others were bought by the Russian mob in 1997 ,, they flew in with a pallet of cash and went right to local realtors that handled rental properties ,, offered a bit above market and closed in less than a week … Converting cash to real property is a prime way to launder large amounts of cash … drug money , bankster cash whatever..