apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

There are homes in Detroit that are on the MLS for $1000! The market is terrible there.

I bought a home in a depressed city (Niagara Falls, New York) and have to say that it was the best money I have ever spent. All of my friends and family are so impressed with the home without even considering that it only cost me $55,000.
My money bought me an all-brick two-family home on a half-acre city lot with two car garage. The home is in magnificent condition and I can afford to splurge on furnishings, rather than sinking my entire paycheck into mortgage payments or paying for expensive repairs.

I'm so happy with my purchase that I am now considering another home close by.....it's a 2200 square-foot home, custom-built in 1952. Asking price? $66,000! I am already picturing my extensive collection of mid-century modern furnishings in the house.

We went to look at a house in our town that was $25,000. It was definitely liveable, although it did need a lot of cosmetic work. For under $35,000 we could have had a beautiful, if small, home. Of course, it is in BFE. ;)

Before even clicking through, I was going to say these houses looked like they were in either Detroit or Cleveland. The old adage "location, location, location" unfortunately still holds true.

Growing up in Flint (50 miles north of Detroit), houses going for a few thousand dollars is not anything new. Funny, I'm volunteering this week in downtown Flint for the Genesee County Land Bank to prepare foreclosed houses for renovation. The house we cleaned up today was sold for $6,000, although it wasn't in fantastic shape, I was expecting it to be much worse. The clean-up was hard, and we had 10 people plus a large dumpster, and there was still so much more to do, I can't imagine just 2 people doing it. And like everyone is saying, it is all about the location, these aren't neighborhoods where you feel very safe.

There are some homes in Detroit that are unbelievably beautiful, sad thing is they've been empty for years, sometimes decades, so they're falling apart. And as much as I dislike gentrification, I would choose that over seeing gorgeous works of art deteriorate.

Detroit is in such a sad state (no pun intended). I desperately want to buy a home in one of the historical neighborhoods and recently went so far as to go out with an agent, but as the poster before said, they've been vacant for so long that they're just falling apart. They feel like living things that are dying before your eyes.

Plus, in most cases, the houses have been absolutely stripped - plumbing, radiators, sinks, toilets, fireplace facades, ornate windows, even door knobs and hinges - all gone. Countless homes are squatter occupied. I watch the listings in a few specific areas and the price will suddenly plummet one day, followed by "currently squatter occupied" as the opening line to the listing. So tragic.

There are SO many homes that sold for $400k only a few years ago and are now on the market for something like $65k.. but they also require massive sums of money to repair - theres ZERO plumbing and fixtures, ZERO wiring or remnants of an electrical system, archaic heating methods and, even then, the boiler has likely been removed and sold for scrap. At the same time, the city is so desperate for money that tax incentives aren't coming to entice people to the area. Some areas are "NEZ eligible" but current residents indicate that the "tax break" is a pathetic 6% or less.. so you're paying taxes on a $400k home thats literally unlivable in the current state. Unless you have a way to sustain a $400k mortgage to pay for restoration of the home - while maintaining your current residence, because the market is too saturated to sell your own home - theres just no way to afford repairing these masterpieces.

Gah! I could go on and on. Its frustrating and incredibly sad.

Geez, and I thought our first house was cheap!

In 1991 we bought a little 1 1/2 storey house in a little town on the Prairie for only $25,000. The average price in town was around $90 - 100,000. Our house was in bad shape -- it had been rented for a long time, and the last tenants were drug dealers. We re-did everything -- exterior cladding, roof, bathrooms (from scratch), floors (installed everywhere), insulation, walls, re-built windows, installed a new kitchen, built fences, spruced up garage, installed brick patios and paths, gardens and landscaping....!

It's very sad to see such cheap houses...

I just purchased a $7,000 house in Pittsburgh. While many houses might be location-deficient, this one is in a pretty good spot, and if you're planning on living in Pittsburgh anyway, it's a great deal. The renovation is pretty diy, but including a new front door and roof, I plan on revamping it (to my whims! ah, home-ownership!) for less than $15k.

It seems to me that this is perfect, serendipitous matchmaking:

We young 20-somethings mired in school debt in a lousy job market can have realistic dreams about owning a home, and for a number of post-industrial cities with rapidly shrinking populations, this is a good way to inject some creative youthful energy.