A Real Estate Bargain

I was up in the East Bay for a couple of days. A friend who is also a real estate broker had just made what I consider to be a terrific investment in the Concord area. This was a bank-owned property that was priced low for the market. He used a line of credit on his own home as the down payment and put a little cash into cosmetic repairs. Less than a week later, it was rented for an amount that gives him a $600-plus cash flow every month, after expenses. Unfortunately (or fortunately, since it's good that our property values haven't dropped to that degree) our prices in the South Bay area have not reached that level, but he claims that there are many other bargains to be had an hour north of us.