Not Just Inexpensive… These Houses are CHEAP
As I flipped open my monthly ”The Real Estate Professional” magazine, I read about a foreclosed home in Detroit, Michigan selling - literally - for $1. One dollar. 100 pennies. 10 dimes. According to the magazine, the home is in one of the most distressed parts of Detroit. After the homeowners were evicted,
“Thieves ripped off the siding, stole the fencing, ripped out the copper tubig and even got the furnace. The home was boarded up, but the boards were soon stolen to board up another porperty nearby.”
Once the property price, originally listed at $1,100, was dropped to $1, it sold in 19 days.
Then today I saw that a home in Saginaw, Michigan sold on eBay for $1.75. The buyer who had not personally seen the home plans to pay the back taxes (a little more than $800) and try to resell it.
These are the deals people want to find in this sagging housing market. While the “best” deals are directly related to where they are located, HUD also offers homes for $1. I’ve been asking my community’s city officials to consider buying some of the homes in what has become the biggest subdivision in the state and turning them into studios - for example for pottery, music, art, dance. It looks like this HUD program could work for this type of initiative.
HUD’s Dollar Homes initiative helps local governments to foster housing opportunities for low to moderate income families and address specific community needs by offering them the opportunity to purchase qualified HUD-owned homes for $1 each.
The folks over at Wisebread caution against some $1 homes because - with some - you’re only buying the home, not the land under it,
The catch is that if you buy the home you do not buy the land underneath it and you are required to move the home. It generally costs $10000 or more to move an entire home, but if you already have a plot of land it might not be such a bad deal. For those who do not have land, some homes might have antique finishings and raw materials that can be salvaged.
May the buyer beware.
Photo of a home purchased for $1 from here.
