A typical flipper:
...The fun time has ended for Leonard and Joyce Sondheimer. In October 2005, the Bradenton couple bought a $338,900 MiraBay townhome on Aberdeen Pond Drive. The bayside investment home with stone counters, hardwood floors and stainless steel appliances was sure to appreciate to half a million dollars. Or so the Sondheimers thought.
After a year on the market, no one has nibbled. Their Realtor chopped the price to break even. The tax bill alone on that single investment - $8,900 a year - is draining the Sondheimers' nest egg.
"I was retired and now I've had to go back to work. I've got to pay all these bills," Leonard Sondheimer, 68, said of his new job as a mattress salesman. "It's getting sickening."
A mattress salesman? Are you kidding me?
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/sptimes...up+Series:+TIMES+SPECIAL+REPORT+|+HOME+PRICES
And then they are these rocket scientists:
...Look what happened to the investment dreams of Jodi and Jeffrey Roberts.
The real estate climate was so balmy the past few years, the Robertses' investment homes showered them with hundreds of thousands of dollars in easy gains.
Now they are bracing for a different forecast: stormy with a chance of foreclosure. Four Pasco and Hillsborough county properties they bought at the tail end of the property boom can't find buyers willing to offer more than the Robertses paid for them.
Price cuts aren't doing the trick. In west Pasco's Gulf Harbors, the couple listed a home for $50,000 less than what they paid. The result? Zero buyer interest.
"I know how it feels to be poor," Jodi Roberts said as she contemplated her combined $15,000 monthly house payments.
And these people actually work for M/I Homes, and still they couldn't see the forest for the trees.