Having worked in both the Financial Investment market & Real Estate Marekt I can't help ask the question, is it need or greed?  In the financial market we have to know just about everything about our client.  Age, financial strength etc.  If you are going to help someone with their investments you need to know what their risk factor is.  In Real Estate is seems like if they make an offer & they can get financing who cares.  Well, I do.

I have a client that before I knew him invested in a growing market.  He is older than I am (he is retirement age, still working), got involved with an investment group from his church and invested in several properties (no one seemed to care about his risk factor, it was total buyer beware).  If he had been my client at the time I would not have advised him to do what he did.  Not only did he buy properties to rent (adverse rent) he took out a second mortgage on each property, he planned to flip in a year, make big bucks.  He never visited those properties, nor did he get the demographics on those areas.  He ended up in areas that even in a good market were not the best areas.

 He is my pennies in heaven client (call it REALTOR guilt).  My husband (commercial broker) & I were able to get him out of 3 properties at break even.  The Azrizona market has continued to go down.  He has gotten behind in payments (I Had three short sales offers on the current listing), he is concerned about his credit and doesn't want to go short sale.  I suggested he talk to his CPA, attorney, bank etc.  It won't belong before he faces foreclosure.

We can point fingers at sub-prime,  easy credit, naive investors but when we point a finger, there are 4 coming back at us.  We are not lacking in blame for this market or for the plight of our investors.  It is time for us to become more educated regarding investments & the results of our actions.