Less than a decade ago, real estate investors were generally known for fixing and flipping houses quickly while driving prices ever upward. But now the trend for many real estate investors is to buy and hold, renting out their properties to create a steady income by providing single-family housing for people who cannot currently buy and don’t want an apartment, and stabilizing neighborhoods and property valuations in the process. I guess this is why CNN – that bastion of anti-capitalist buffoonery – decided to label such investors as “vultures”[1].
That’s right – if you “swoop in and buy ‘distressed properties’… cheap” – particularly in struggling markets like Phoenix, Miami and Las Vegas – you get the distinction of being a “vulture” in CNN’s view.
Admittedly, the article is not entirely negative about real estate investors, which is clearly a good thing. But what’s annoying is the clear unwillingness to recognize and acknowledge that profiting from a bad situation doesn’t mean that a person is doing anything that’s illegal, unethical or even questionable – and certainly isn’t cause for saddling a person with a label with negative connotations like “vulture”.
But there’s another angle to consider:
This type of media coverage for our industry is common but is neither accurate nor reasonable. But then again, it may be nothing to worry about since CNN has become increasingly irrelevant to a more discerning market in recent years, as evidenced by its inability to beat (or even come close to) rival Fox News Channel during all 24 hours of the broadcast day. Media bias against capitalism (including us as investors) definitely exists, but it seems that the media broadcasting those biases are becoming less relevant.
Have you encountered this type of sentiment in your real estate investing? Does it bother you?
Thank you for reading! Your comments and questions are welcomed below.
[1] http://money.cnn.com/2010/08/02/real_estate/new_vulture_investing/
Are you totally out of your mind? CNN has deteriorated from the Turner days admittedly.However to discuss it in the same article as that squalid junk from the Murdoch stable,FOX,is a joke. Listen to NPR,read NY Times, Independent & Guardian [online],for objectivety and insightful analysis. And frankly capitalism is all we have,and for the while the system within which we have to operate.Within it are saints and sinners trying to get by. There is no black and white, only shades of grey.However recent events would indicate that cracks in the edifice that is capitalism are going to lead to the need to address the relationship between material goods[and wealth in general],and ownership.The growth of wealth in the top 5% versus the impoverishment of the rest will eventually lead to political instability, and the need to define a new assessment of what should be personal wealth, and what should be viewed as common wealth. History bears this out time and again. Meanwhile we have to get by with a system that is well past its glory days.The personalities and opinions paraded daily on FOX, are symptomatic of an ailing society wallowing in sensationalism,and incapable of comprehending rationalism,objectivity or truth.
Well, the vultures comment is a bit over edge.
However, many of the “gurus” bring criticism on themselves. One of the biggest gaffes is the way they tout, “Oh, you can do this with no cash and no credit”, as long as “this” does not refer to getting hold of their materials. When you ask, they’ll say, “Go out and find someone who’ll pay for you!” IF WE COULD DO THAT WE WOULDN’T BE STUCK WITH NO CASH AND NO CREDIT!!! (Where’s Sam Kinison when you need him??!!) What part of “no cash, no credit” is in anyway ambiguous?
Another gaffe is to spout a bunch of sales-speak and other stuff into a microphone, sell the results as a home-study course, then complain that only 1% or so actually profit from buying their stuff. That’s because of the gaffe which came before it: they talk about having no college degree, barely finishing high school, and so on. That, of course, is an admission that their “educational materials” were not prepared by qualified educators. No wonder very few learn anything of value from it!
With such a ripe market for such entrepreneurial products, you’d think they’d be bending over backwards trying to one-up each other’s products: “…developed by the most respected educators in the academic world…”, and such, just like their other hype.
BUT WAIT! There’s more!
The “gurus” all talk about wanting to help folks out in these trying economic times. How many of them have taken on PAID EMPLOYEES, training these students (OJT) to make money for them and, ultimately, for the student’s own families, to get people back to work, feeding, housing and clothing their families and paying their bills instead of taking the food out of their families mouths, the roof out from over their head and the clothes off their back, all to buy a course from which less 1% of purchasers ever derive any value? “Oh, just give me a testimonial, and I’ll give it all back to you!”
BUT WAIT! THERE’S STILL MORE…
The gurus will all complain that this post is so negative, “glass half-empty” and all that, yet I’ll bet that NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THEM will even THINK about lifting a finger to prove me wrong!
Guess they ARE just vultures, after all.
Faux News? Please….
So many viewers of faux have found a home because they constantly play into and manipulate these viewers’ ignorance and fear.
Let’s face it, there’s a lot of ignorant people in the US. For example, it was reported that about 20% of “Americans” couldn’t identify the US on an unmarked world map. I know from first-hand experience most cannot locate Afghanistan or Iraq on a map; let alone anything about these locales’ history, current affairs, etc.
And the many loudmouth buffoons on faux manipulate and PROFIT off of (mostly) white folks’ fear that they are “losing ‘their’ country”, there’s a secret UN plot to overthrow the US, black helicopters, and other delusions.
I mean our local CHP just had to gun down a heavily armed, 2-striker, Beck-head nut job that was planning an assassination on a local NAACP and “liberal” non-profit whose:
“… mission is to partner with philanthropists, foundations, activists, and organizations across the country and across the globe to promote economic justice, robust democratic processes, and the opportunity to live in a healthy and sustainable environment where human rights are preserved and protected.”
Yeah, real bunch of nazis those liberals, eh?
Though there can be legitimate criticism of Obama, much of the hate spewing out of the teabaggers is so obvious and just thinly veiled racism. They just can’t stand that a “black” man is president.
I mean, portraying Obama as Hitler?!? The President of our United States? Really folks? That’s just sick, ridiculously inaccurate, and profoundly disrespectful of the office of the POTUS.
I don’t watch CNN, but I would rather recuperate from broken ribs again rather than watch that faux news garbage.
After watching for years the obvious bias of CNN I am now thankful they are wearing their bias on the sleeve for the world to see. If there weren’t broadcasts such as the fair and balanced Fox News I wonder if America would have woken up to this fact. As a Realtor in the Phoenix market I can honestly say our economy would have suffered a much heavier toll than we already have if not for the investor community coming to the rescue. Everything from foreclosed on homeowners who need to solidify a reasonable rental, to the construction trade who are fixing the houses up and keeping a modicum of value in the community for those remaining. We would not be seeing the revitalization we are seeing in so many of our communities without the investor. That there are news media out there making Investors the bad guy is just more of the same bashing of our American way of life. It’s about the Mom & Pop’s being bad for the economy, not the true villians such as the Goldman Sachs, AIG, et als. All while they and their cronies were robbing we as taxpayers blind with their inside the beltway corruption. But hey, why would CNN report on the true villians in this recession, GREED by those in power such as the Chris Dodd’s and Barney Frank’s among us. Thankfully, we as a viewing public are keen to their crap and are turning them off in droves.
As Dan Doran has noted, if it weren’t for vultures, we’d be up to our eyeballs in rotting, stinking carcasses. Vultures don’t kill anything; they just clean up the mess others create. The symbol of our country, the bald eagle, spends more of its time functioning as a vulture, eating carrion, than it does as a predator. CNN is part of the establishment media, which functions as our anti-capitalist government’s fifth column. Government policies going all the way back to the Carter administration produced the growing heaps of carcasses in the real estate market. We real estate investors are just cleaning up the mess. No one can do it more efficiently.
When one of my mentors, Pat Precourt a short sale whiz in CT, was accused of being a vulture, he responded “Yes, I am a vulture. But I don’t create the kill; I simply clean it up.”
Media bias is all over the place. CNN continues to fall in the ratings along with MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and NBC. The media is sinking into the land of irrelevance as fewer and fewer people are paying attention to them. FOX News is the only reasonably reliable source left in the TV media. The truth is, the TV media is now more about politics than journalism. They abandoned journalism some time ago. This is a fact that is now catching up with them. I haven’t watched any of the above networks (other than FOX) for quite some time. I get most of my news from the internet.
Does anyone even watch CNN any more, I do not know anyone and their ratings second it.
My experience is most people could care who buys, the banks sure don’t.
This country is in deep trouble. The “mainstream media” attacks legitimate investors, business owners, etc. while passing on the Hollywood elite who make millions even their films flop and the recording artists who contribute to the decline of decency. To make matters worse, this administration has tried to solve a problem that was created by too much debt by taking on even more debt – this is doomed to fail.
Only from DRE licensed agents who feel that no real estate transaction should be completed without their services. Whaa,Whaa, Whaa!!! The last time they were in control we watched as they aided the corrupt banks in committing the single most costly act of fraud perpetuated against the American people since the fraudulent acts of a few industry leaders and wall street insiders that led to the crash of 1929.
So to all you DRE licensed Brokers and Agents I say, step off and leave the business to sellers and buyers. Put up those licenses and get a job like the rest of us. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!!!!!! Members of the DRE and NAR.
Maybe Time Warner will smarten up and pull the plug on CNN.
No sense spending money on a loser, and it is. Slanted news
no longer draws favor from the majority.
The topic of this article fits perfectly with some interesting dynamics:
1) Sound business and prudent saving and investing are demonized and villified while presenting the dawdling borrowing populace as being ‘victimized’ by those who save and invest. The harsh economic reality is that those who borrow always do so from those who save and invest. Those who save and invest have the wherewithal, in today’s market, to buy assets at distress prices unlike those who have chosen not to save and invest.
2) The mainstream media have a fairly obvious agenda to demonize true market forces (aka capitalism) in favor of a largely socialist agenda hence the references to ‘vultures.’ In a socialist paradigm, individual initiative, savings, efforts and remuneration are castigated.
Welcome to AmeriKa
Eric Johnson
Bradenton, FL
The Financial Independence Project
don’t have any money..how do I work for an ivester that will let me buy homes to rent and make money? alex briceno phone 4066526027 briceno@bresnan.net