Why is it?

[N/A N/A]

Okay, I'm a mortgage banker that works primarily with real estate investors. Why is it in a market where you fight to overpay for property that real estate investors crawl out of the woodwork to start buying (like 2004 and 2005 where investors were content with sometimes less than 7% ROA) compared to the now very soft market when seemingly every investor I know or meet sits on their hands avoiding the best buyers market in years??

What's the deal there? Isn't that a little (or a lot) like buying buying stock high and selling low? Isn't their something you learn as a kid to buy cheap?? By the way the credit contraction is keeping more and more people from actually owning homes and driving vacancy rates down. Properties are now easier to rent and a proper ROA is easy for even a novice real estate investor.

I've been in the mortgage business a pretty long time (more than a dozen years) and I'm just curious if anyone else is puzzled by this.
:violin: