It was an interesting lot, the county created a handful of parcels on the lake and opened it up as a lottery to win the right to choose and buy a parcel.

Why work to improve the money management skills of the poor when you can sell them lottery tickets instead?

It's just anecdotal to our firm, but even in this market well over 90% of our clients are completing their exchanges with properties that satisfy them.So I guess that equates to me selling you a lottery ticket for $850 that has a 90% chance of paying you $27K.   

They’re going to build some token housing, but you’d have better luck with a lottery ticket than snatching one of those units.

It's also possible to win the lottery, but again very unrealistic.

At this point, I'm not entirely sure that my parents didn't just win the lottery instead of investing in real estate.Does anyone have any ideas/suggestions?

At 200+ units, even we sometimes "win the lottery" with a bad renter.

And when they happen on your property, they’re coming after you to redeem their lottery ticket.

Around 70% of lottery winners end up broke within 7 years.

There's an issue on the ballot to significantly reduce STR licenses and move to a lottery system.