[MarkJ]

There's still good money to be made flipping in some of the decent sections of high unemployment cities.

I have a current opportunity to buy a property I've flipped twice already when it comes up for auction again.

One of my sisters recently made a lowball cash/barter offer on a home she's flipped twice before.

[dolanbaker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')here's still good money to be made flipping in some of the decent sections of high unemployment cities.

I have a current opportunity to buy a property I've flipped twice already when it comes up for auction again.

One of my sisters recently made a lowball cash/barter offer on a home she's flipped twice before.

[vision-master]

all the while poor ppl's federal taxes have gone up. Mine went up this year. My net income is ridiculously low. Rich ppl like Mark are laughing all the way to the bank as they are paying even less in taxes now.

Net taxabale income less than $3,000 (2010) an my taxes went up? WTF

[MarkJ]

We're not laughing all the way to the bank.

We're performing higher volume/lower margin work and investing more money and time to make the same money we made several years ago due to regulations, fees, zoning, expiring tax breaks/incentives and rising costs of property taxes, insurance, materials, equipment, replacement parts, inventory, gas, diesel, water/sewer rates etc.

Profits on flipping properties are down substantially, risk is up substantially, plus the supply of decent fixer uppers has dried up.

Two years ago the market was loaded with decent town, village and semi-rural ranches, capes, cottages and doublewides selling for 20 to 40K in low tax regions. In the past couple of years, most of these properties doubled in price, so there's no money to be made.

Although homes sales are flat, I'm doing very well with rentals, building lots and acreage.

[Ibon]

30% of all closings are now cash deals. There are great deals to be had if you have cash. I know a wealthy Chinese guy here in Panama who owns a bunch of hardware stores and he has told me that he and a bunch of his Chinese buddies have been buying residential real estate in the US this past year.

We like to focus on all of the victims of the housing crisis and all those who have lost their jobs and the millions who have foreclosed. That's fine but we should also focus on the enormous wealth still out there licking their chops at buying up distressed housing. For this reason I do not see a real significant double dip happening.

[Ibon]

I have a proposal to deal with distressed housing. I just mentioned that Chinese dude on my last post. There are so many foreigners residing in foreign countries who have off shore money that they can use to buy distressed housing in the US. Since they are non residents and non citizens the IRS doesn't have any scrutiny of the source of their funds.

What if the US government gave amnesty to all US citizens squirreling away billions in overseas accounts if they used these funds to purchase homes? As it is a Chinese residing in a foreign country can more easily buy real estate in the US than many US citizens who are afraid of getting taxed or fined if they bring their un reported over seas funds back into the US.