Role of equity when buying investment property

[Leonid Sapronov]

I've been reading this forum continuously for the past two months and am amazed at the amount of information here. Thank you all for contributing and sharing!

One of the things that I'm still trying to wrap my head around is the role of equity when buying a property. Specifically, I hear of investors avoiding sellers with equity or the opposite - looking for sellers with equity. This subject seems to come up more when talking about motivated sellers and short sales. Anyways - why is equity important when analyzing a deal? How does it affect the investor's thinking? Is seller having equity in his/her home good or bad?

This question probably sounds extremely basic and silly, but I'm still at that stage - lots of silly questions.