Time to Foreclosure invest in Riverside, California?

Twice a day, would-be real estate moguls gather on the local courthouse steps for the latest can't-miss opportunity in California's land rush: the foreclosure auction.

Beneath the shade of a magnolia tree, veterans and "newbies"crowd around auctioneer Gary Oberdalhoff as he lists a property whose owners couldn't pay the mortgage, one of thousands to go on the block in this sprawling, arid region 50 miles east of Los Angeles.

"Do I have any opening bids?" Oberdalhoff asks. Several step forward to show him cashier's checks worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the bidding begins.

It might be a scene straight out of the Great Depression, if you ignore the Bluetooth wireless headsets.

A record level of home foreclosures has hit the U.S. housing sector after years of reckless lending to risky borrowers. To those on the courthouse steps, that spells opportunity. Unlike during the Great Depression, investors are still eager to enter the market.

"A lot of people's misery is other people's gains,"says investor Bryon Bettencourt. "It's just the way of the world, dog eat dog."

As the nation's real-estate boom curdles, speculators who a year ago might have camped out in front of new housing developments are now hoping to find a bargain among the thousands of houses emptied by foreclosure.

But veterans say true bargains are becoming harder to find as the number of homes on the auction block swells, when the pros do their homework the start here. www.tracforeclosures.com

Few places have felt the impact of the slowing market more than this fast-growing region known as the Inland Empire of Southern California.

Starting in the 1970s, the Inland Empire's orange groves gave way to subdivisions as families migrated from the coast in search of relatively affordable housing.

As property values marched higher over the past decade, homeowners refinanced their mortgages to pay for vacations and new cars. Thanks to risk-tolerant "subprime" lenders, people with a history of bankruptcy and maxed-out credit cards were able to enter the housing market with loans charging higher rates for borrowers with lower credit quality.

Within a few years if it doesn't become a foreclosure or so the value of the real estate will increase. Therefore if you plan on living in the home for a decade or so, you can expect to make a good profit when you decide to sell. When it comes to real estate investing there are always a few risks involved. This is why it pays to shop around and truly examine a particular area or subdivision before making a purchase. Obviously you want to value of the property to increase over time and not plummet. Bad thing to have your prised investment crap out.