The City of Riverside, California today announced a new plan, in light of the high volume of foreclosed homes, that it was going to start buying foreclosed home, fix them up, and resell them to ‘the needy’.  Isn’t that nice?  The city government in that lovely southern California town is going to do something to ‘make a difference’.  Using tax payers dollars, they are going to enter the house-flipping industry in the midst of possibly the most disastrous housing market on record.

Uh…say what??

In order for this to happen, Riverside city government must hire someone to find the foreclosed houses and conduct the real estate deal.  Escrow documents, realtor fees, etc, etc.  A lot of stuff has to happen for the city to take possession of the distressed properties.  Then, some sort of contractor must be hired to assess the property and determine how to fix it up and present it for sale.

Then the contractor must hire sub-contractors to come in and do the actual fix-‘em-up work.