Education via trail & error is easily the #1 worst way to go about anything today UNLESS your an explorer, inventor, revolutionizing and still all of those have a whole lot of training and education backing them. 

Removed and come back, or of the sort.

Just to add to Chris's post.Time is the best friend of a good decision and the worst enemy of a bad decision.Keep endeavoring to make good decisions and ask questions on the forum like you did if in doubt.You will have a few bum jackers like myself that will happily share an opinion on the situation.Your job is to syphon through all those opinions and as they should mold your decision making for the better 🙏Appreciate it to both of you!

Or are they performing some sort of arbitrage and they are not the end buyer.

Worst part, we missed many opportunity during this time.  

This is the stereotypical CA worst case scenario explained.

Based on the pricing below, the above ad wording is, as best very misleading and, at worst, is not at all true. 

It's sort of going backwards from owning your real estate. 

As far as the sale of a property with a mortgage on it, that all gets sorted out at close. ie, you bring your money, the bank gets what they have coming, the realtor gets what they have coming (if there's one involved) and the seller gets the rest.

The worst we ever did was like $40k on a $350k house and that was a low point for us ...