Burial Plots: A Buyer's Market for Eternal Homes

When you hit hard times, as many folks have, what would you sell to make ends meet? What precious possessions are a little less precious when the rent or mortgage is overdue?
Certainly, things you don't need right now are things you may consider selling. Like those burial plots you've been holding onto.
The Associated Press reports that burial plot brokers are seeing an uptick in the reselling of grave sites. To move the plots fast, they are selling for a quarter of their original price. What a steal! If you have a job, maybe it's time to invest.
Ebay has twelve burial plots up for auction. Is that an average number or a high number? Your guess is as good as mine. A few of the ebay sellers offer free shipping, but I don't see the point of that.
The asking prices on ebay range from $250 to $12,000, but there are no bidders on any of them yet. One seller is selling four plots in Laurel, Maryland, my hometown. Eerie.
I wonder why people even have burial plots to sell. Wouldn't people who plans that far ahead be less likely to get in financial trouble? Maybe the plots are already in the family. Like The Big Bopper's family, who is selling the Bopper's casket fifty years after his death. Or maybe more people make early funeral arrangements than I think.
The only place I heard of buying funerals in advance is in the novels I read as a kid. The characters in the books I read are dirt, dirt poor. Through great sacrifice, the mother who could barely feed her kids would come up with the weekly nickel to pay her life insurance. Does this scenario come from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn? Or A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich? All of the above?
This trend also reminds me that "cemetery" is one of English's most frequently misspelled words. To be fair, most people don't have to spell "cemetery" often. But if this sell-off continues, people may stop getting tripped up by that third "e."
Or perhaps, people should learn the easier-to-spell, "cremation."