Housing Crisis Upside: Bargains for Everyone

Selling Fast... or Trying To

Lauroesch said that it's also generally faster to buy a home from an investor than from a bank.

Investors, she said, "are interested in turning over these properties. They're very efficient."

Known as Las Brisas, this South Florida luxury estate was sold for $11.5 million, more than $8 million less than its 2007 list price. "I was able to sell it at a shorter time than customary now," said real estate agent Brent Coetzee, who took over the listing from another agent in 2008. But, he added, these days "everything is kind of tough to sell." /Courtesy Brent Coetzee.

"When buying from the bank, maybe the price point is a little bit more to your advantage -- but you're dealing with a large institution," she said. "It may take a little longer."

Heavily discounted homes are often sold at auctions and, like bank-owned homes, they're typically purchased "as is."

Sharga said that, when possible, he recommends that would-be buyers have a contractor check out the home for problems before the auction -- it's a service, Sharga said, that a contractor may perform for free in hopes of getting the buyer's business later on.

How can you tell when a heavily discounted home is actually a good deal? Experts say there are a few things to watch for:

The Original Price Was Too High: Be wary of price reductions. Some are bargains and others are just marketing gimmicks.

"Maybe the person just overpriced it. Whoever was selling it might have just been an idiot. But nothing brings people into the store like a 30 percent discount, a 50 percent discount," Kelman said. "People tend to look at price reductions and overreact. To some extent, there are Realtors who are gaming the system. … They drop the price to generate more activity in the listings."

Overvalued Neighborhood: One of the reasons home prices in certain parts of the country -- like areas of California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona -- have seen such precipitous declines is because they were overvalued to begin with.