Call them grave dancers, vulture funds, turnaround specialists or the more euphemistic ‘opportunity investors.’ However you identify them, the deal is the same: When hyperactive real estate markets lose their sizzle, or property owners no longer can afford to hang on to their houses, well-capitalized investors smell blood and move in. That’s happening in most of the ‘bubble’ areas of the country that saw heavy speculative activity and razzle-dazzle financing from 2001 through 2005. But it’s also happening in less volatile markets where unaffordable mortgages and economic distress are producing record numbers of panic sales to investors at fractions of former values. In Miami Beach and elsewhere in South Florida, for example, real estate consultant Jack McCabe said he is advising ‘hedge funds, high-net-worth individuals, Wall Street investment banks, and groups of doctors and lawyers’ who all want a piece of the area’s tottering condominium and townhouse sector, where some properties are selling for 50 cents on the dollar. McCabe, chief executive of McCabe Research and Consulting in Deerfield Beach, Fla., said investment groups with capital ‘in the multiple billions’ are already active in South Florida, searching for fire-sale prices on properties with good long-term prospects. In […]