Short sales on multifamily?

[Matthew Mucker]

Has anyone done any short sales on multifamily units?

I'm looking in my backyard and there's a glut of quadplexes all on one street for sale by absentee owners, all of whom bought in the past 3 years. Based on the 50% rule, tax records, and deed records, these people WAY overpaid (apparently they expected the Texas market to do what the California market was doing).

I ran the numbers, and in order for the deal to make sense to me, I'd have to buy at 50% of the asking price. (Asking $260K, my cutoff looks like it'd be around $135K. Gross rents are $2800 and I'd have to finance 100%.)

I'm wondering if banks are doing short sales on these types of properties.