Before you chew my head off, please read this blog. As many of you know, I sell a number of bank owned properties.  This is not as easy of a business as others on ActiveRain imply because there are a lot of things that go on behind the scenes that selling agents and buyers do not see.

When I first started selling foreclosure homes, I felt a bit of remorse at first.  After all, people were losing their homes and I was benefiting from their loss.  However, after dealing with a number of these people and what they left behind, I no longer feel any pity.

The media would like you to think that innocent people are getting booted from the homes they worked so hard to maintain.  They would like you to think that it wasn't their fault at all.  They are victims of the recession and home crisis, losing their jobs and then not being able to make payments on their home, which winds up in foreclosure because it is already underwater.

Of course, in the field the answer is much different.  I'm sure if you look hard enough, there are a few sob stories that can be told.  However, the vast majority of homeowners who I see losing their homes deserved it.

In one home, the owner decided to stop paying the garbage bill and just threw it in his backyard.  Neighbors tried to complain to the authorities, but the town did nothing.  After he left the house, I arranged for a cleaning company to come and get rid of the garbage.  On two occasions when we were photographing and previewing the property, neighbors stopped by and thanked us for getting rid of this horrible person.

On another occasion, I stopped by a property to check vacancy and noticed that it was not.  It took me several attempts to get a hold of the individual and I finally was able to offer him cash for key to leave the house.  On my way out, I snickered at seeing a sign on his car that he ran a "get out of debt" business.  He called back later and demanded more money to leave the house, to which we agreed.  I setup an appointment to sign the papers in my office and he never showed up.  I attempted to bring the papers to the house and he just played the music louder in an attempt to not hear me.  I gave up and let the bank forcefully evict him.  Weeks later, when I pulled his name up on tax ID I noticed that he had purchased a condo at an auction for $120,000 cash.

In another house, curse words were written on the walls.  For another house, the previous owner parked his car outside during one of my open houses and harassed each buyer going in - telling them he had a better house down the street (which was also eventually foreclosed).

The fact is, these people did not deserve to have a house in the first place.  You can fault the banks for giving them the money to start, but the reality is we wound up with a huge number of people owning homes that could not afford them and did not deserve them.  Now the market is correcting itself and in the end I suspect things will be closer to the way they belong.