Cite as: 511 U. S. 531 (1994)
Souter, J., dissenting
plain effect of § 548(a)(2)(A) opens it to some equally plain objections.
The first and most obvious of these objections is the very enigma of the Court's reading. If a property's "value" is conclusively presumed to be whatever it sold for, the "less than reasonabl[e] equivalen[ce]" question will never be worth asking, and the bankruptcy avoidance power will apparently be a dead letter in reviewing real estate foreclosures. Cf. 11 U. S. C. § 361(3) ("indubitable equivalent").7 The Court answers that the section is not totally moribund: it still furnishes a way to attack collusive or procedurally deficient real property foreclosures, and it enjoys a vital role in authorizing challenges to other transfers than those occurring on real estate foreclosure. The first answer, however, just runs up against a new objection. If indeed the statute fails to reach noncollusive, procedurally correct real estate foreclosures, then the recent amendments discussed above were probably superfluous. There is a persuasive case that collusive or seriously irregular real estate sales were already subject to avoidance in bankruptcy, see, e. g., In re Worcester, 811 F. 2d 1224, 1228, 1232 (CA9 1987) (interpreting § 541(a)), and neither the Court nor the respondents and their amici identify any specific case in which a court pronounced itself powerless to avoid a collusive foreclosure sale. But cf. Madrid, supra, at 1204 (Farris, J., concurring). It would seem peculiar,
7 Evidently, many States take a less Panglossian view than does the majority about the prices paid at sales conducted in accordance with their prescribed procedures. If foreclosure-sale prices truly represented what properties are "worth," ante, at 539, or their "fair and proper price," ante, at 545, it would stand to reason that deficiency judgments would be awarded simply by calculating the difference between the debt owed and the "value," as established by the sale. Instead, in those jurisdictions permitting creditors to seek deficiency judgments it is quite common to require them to show that the foreclosure price roughly approximated the property's (appraised) value. See, e. g., Tex. Prop. Code Ann. §§ 51.003- 51.005 (Supp. 1992); see generally Gelfert v. National City Bank of N. Y., 313 U. S. 221 (1941); cf. id., at 233 ("[T]he price which property commands at a forced sale may be hardly even a rough measure of its value").
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