raw, the house had been bought by a California-based couple. The strange visit from an investor liaison notwithstanding, McGraw's home represented one of millions of foreclosure properties on the market. Despite the risks of buying into a sagging housing market, a small group of investors eye such real estate with cash in hand. And some want a quick flip. Foreclosure sales represented 26 percent of all U.S. residential property purchases in 2010, down from 29 percent in 2009, the year housing prices were thought to have hit bottom, according to foreclosure monitor RealtyTrac. While some buy foreclosed homes so they can rent to tenants, others invest in everything from extensive renovations to cosmetic repairs before re-selling the houses for a profit. "Investors in today’s market tend to be a little more experienced than the ones in the boom, and in a lot of cases sat out the boom because they thought prices were unsustainably high. It turns out they were right," said Rick Sharga, senior vice president at RealtyTrac. "Now that prices have fallen, they cacompanies,” says his company website. “The Westly Group is uniquely positioned to take advantage of this surge of interest and growth.” Uniquely positioned, indeed. One of President Barack Obama’s most prolific fundraisers, Westly was among guests at January’s state dinner for the president of China. A month later, he dined with Obama again at an exclusive San Francisco Bay area gathering for prominent high tech CEOs, including the leaders of Facebook, Google and Apple. He visits White House staff and, as a member of a government advisory board on energy policy, has the ear of Energy Secretary Steven Chu, whose department hands out the sort of seed money sought by companies in The Westly Group portfolio. He even has hosted the president at fundraisers in his Northern California home, and co-ho up from 22.5 percent, or 10.8 million households, in the July-September quarter. The number of underwater mortgages had fallen in the previous three quarters. But that was mostly because more homes had fallen into foreclosure. Underwater mortgages typically rise when home prices fall. Home prices in December hit their lowest point since the housing bust in 11 of 20 major U.S. metro areas. In a healthy housing market, about 5 percent of homeowners are underwater. Roughly two-thirds of homeowners in Nevada with a mortgage had negative home equity, the worst in the country. Arizona, Florida, Michigan and California were next, with up to 50 percent of homeowners with mortgages in those states underwater. Oklahoma had the smallest percentage of underwater homeowners in the October-December quarter, at 5.8 percent. Only nine states recorded percentages less than 10 percent. In addition to the more than 11 million households th