One other thing that the General Public thinks is that Real Estate is a way to get Rich and that Property Values always go up...Dumb Money believes what the Government tells them and they get all their information from TV.

In these cases, the specific sector was over-inflated and collapsed as faulty - maybe even fraudulent financial vehicles and/or practices were introduced to suck even more money out of the sector as it heated up.Just because the dot com sector eventually swallowed reality and fixed its fundamentals on value products/services, the energy sector resolved in the courts, and the housing sector flushed out its overly speculative practices (many of which were really bank-driven, primarily as loans issued to folks who had no business buying housing - and toxic mortgage packages created with weird names and no vehicle history to attract investments thus made with no due diligence and no 3rd party oversight - which took unprecedented government intervention and bailout across many sectors to fix), doesn't mean that the next sector downturn trigger doesn't lurk out there.What some call creativity or innovation is really just greed masked in packages so new and weird that due diligence is nearly impossible.  

Fed increased federal fund rate, not mortgage rates.

But more government in our lives makes it easier, LOL.

These are programs at the state and federal level that assist potential developers (PDs) by allowing them to use engineering controls in lieu of environmental cleanup.  

@Daniel Madsen  Permanent Resident Aliens(green card holder) can get conventional and government financing options.  

Article from HousingWire:The National Association of Realtors drew a line in the sand between homebuyers and investors, but one investor says he’s had enough.NAR made its stance on investors clear on several occasions: Investors are creating more competition for first-time homebuyers, possibly even keeping them from homeownership.Back in January, the initial public offering for Blackstone Group’s single-family rental operator, Invitation Homes, became one step closer to reality, as the company disclosed the terms of its initial public offering.What was unusual about this deal was the fact that it happened with the backing of mortgage giant Fannie Mae, as noted in the Wall Street Journal.NAR did not wait long to criticize the GSE, sending a letter to Mel Watt, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, according to an article by Lorraine Woellert for POLITICO.

If you do go to the auction sale, you also got to check for state and federal liens though, they are trickier to get rid of.Since the payoff is already high, in this scenario one way for you to profit from buying the note and foreclosing is to negotiate to buy the note from a lender at a large discount from the current balance and hope the bidding goes above what you paid (you'll profit from the difference). 

They don't, they government just let's them keep printing 10X what they hold.Seems like a lot of wasted time.

He is a former federal contractor and now works as an appraiser which certainly helps with our plans!