Normally, recessions are not times when people spend. In fact, the truth is somewhat closer to the opposite – during recessions, purse strings are tight and consumer spending goes down. Part of the reason for this is that people do not have as much discretionary cash – employment usually drops in recessionary periods, which has the effect of making people more worried about keeping their jobs than about things like taking vacations or buying cars and boats.

Indeed, the recession was caused by people who were spending too much money on things like car notes and house loans – and when the banks finally realized that many of their borrowers were not going to be able to make regular payments in the long term because they were locked into unsustainable mortgages, they finally began to realize the extent of the damage that this could cause. In order to mitigate this damage as quickly as possible, banks had to resort to the brutal processes of foreclosure and repossession. The bankers, then, began seizing people’s assets and trying to liquidate them as soon as possible so that the bank could stay in business.

While this was very unfortunate for the people involved, it has the interesting side effect of making a lot of these consumer durables very cheap. Take, for example, cars or boats – banks seized a massive number of these, and they were all placed on the auction block in huge numbers. The sudden boost to supply meant that the price of each individual product dropped, because people were now willing to pay less (due to an over-supply, or glut, in the market).

This created a lot of opportunities for people who did have liquidity lying around. Anyone who was willing to make cash purchases during the height of the recession would have pretty much had their pick of fantastic bargains – repo cars, repo boats, even foreclosed homes – to choose from.  The repo cars guide agrees, some of these opportunities were truly once in a lifetime chances; and for those willing to look hard enough, some of them are still around.