That's kind of ironic because about six years ago my family was bidding on a lovely property in Wyoming that had been foreclosed upon. The previous owners had spent lavishly on the place and we ended up buying it for about 20% of what they'd spent on it. There's no way we'd have been able to afford this place in a normal circumstance.
There you go. As your experience attests, the bank wants solid, performing loans on its books, not real estate. Real estate on their books is the very asset disposition problem they want to avoid. A bank will do almost anything to avoid ending up with an REO...especially at a time when they’re having to foreclose on a significant percentage of their outstanding loans. They’d rather sell an REO at a massive loss than pay the ad valorem taxes on it.
The real irony is the bank would have refused that same offer from the original owners.