Countrywide had it down to a science. They *wanted* foreclosures.
I made an offer on a home back in March 2007. When we looked at it, the list was $490K. Instead of low-balling, my then wife-to-be and I decided to make them an offer they couldn't refuse (she really wanted it) - $470K.
The sellers then raised the list price to $500K and said their agent had 'made a mistake'. They rejected our offer.
Some other stuff went on after that - including them sending us a personal letter and quoting scripture about how much they'd put into the home - but we did finally settle on $490K. There were conditions, though, and within a few weeks, it was clear that the house was losing value, so we voided the contract.
I put in an offer when the asking price fell to $350,000 and they refused it!
Long story short...it's been empty the entire time (since summer 2006) and is now down to $305,000.
Gotta love it when greed turns to spite. They sure are showing how 'Christian' they are. 
that was a great story. I don't really wish ill on people in general, but it is always satisfying to hear about pricks like this getting exactly what they have coming to them. kinda reminds me of a fun game me and some friends used to play on greedy fucks back in college during the dot com boom.
back then, around 98-'00 every homo and his cousin were trying to sell domain names.... and for ridiculous prices. low quality domain names with devaluing elements such as misspellings and numbers selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars was not an uncommon site. people thought the road to riches simply included purchasing a catchy sounding name for a few bucks, put a ridiculous price tag on it and watch the offers come in. what made this so funny was their attitude like they were getting ripped off if they were offered less than what they were asking...
we used to call individuals who were selling these domains and act like prospective buyers. I remember one instance that outlines what it was all about perfectly. this asshole was selling this shitty domain name.. it was called petbizzz.com or close to that. he was selling it for about $400k. now anyone that knows anything about domains knows that a shitty domain like this is hardly worth the registration fee let alone a premium. so we talk for a while and finally tell this clown our company really wants the domain name, and we would like to make an offer of $250k. this guy sits there ho humming trying to think of what to do. you could tell he was reeling thinking he had just struck the lottery, but the greed overcame him and he tried to press his luck.
"I can't go any lower than $300,000" he says. perfect. this is the best part of the call, we would then type in a slight deviation of the name, in this case it was like petbizz.com with a z less. we would act like an excited group of dot com assholes and gleefully tell them we just found a domain that was even a little better than theirs and we only had to pay the registration fee. he was speechless as we hung up on him and had a great laugh for the rest of the day at his expense.
nothing to do with the current subject, but a good greed story nonetheless.
