$1000 for a fixer-upper home is only cheap in the U.S.

[zaimoni]

But it is happening:There are 18 listings in Flint, Mich., for under $3,000, according to Realtor.com. There are 22 in Indianapolis, 46 in Cleveland and a whopping 709 in Detroit. All of these communities have been hit hard by foreclosures, and most of these homes are being sold by the lenders that repossessed them

Comments

[detroitfather]

Come on over ... Detroit is near my house, and Flint is near my parish church.

The only thing about buying the fixer-upper houses is, you need an exit strategy. And for that, you have to count on Detroit coming back enough that you'll find a buyer for the fixed-up house. No one wants to live in the only restored house on the block, if the rest of the houses are bombed out.

Here is a photo of an old hotel, not that far off Woodward, really close to St. John's Episcopal Church, Detroit. I had a picture of a typical burnt-out house, but I couldn't locate it.



That being said, there are multiple churches I know of that are renovating whole blocks of homes, and that has huge potential. It just makes you want to cry, how beautiful some of these homes in Detroit are (mansions, really, with tall, old-school, cherry wood baseboards and high ceilings) ... and how they have gone to seed.

But, anyhow, when you can get a whole block of these things fixed up, it is great. Can you say Re-Gentrification?

[zaimoni]

The only thing about buying the fixer-upper houses is, you need an exit strategy.
And if that strategy involves selling: "FATAL RISK, no vulture venture capital for you!" ;)

It's a bit hard to predict the market value of the fixed home in a few months right now :( A healthy trust fund does seem to be the cleanest way to swing it.

(And even back when prices were more predictable, the love of money was the root of poverty. E.g., way back in the late 1980's some airbrained homebuilder thought of the dwarf home next door (back when I was living at Merriam, KS): "huge lot, tiny home -- surely two McMansions with virtually no yards would sell for more than the estate-ditching $30,000!"

Said builder didn't check the sale prices of homes within two blocks. I'm not sure what the gross margin on the dustboard-walled new homes was, but opening with $120,000 (1988(?) dollars) when everything nearby sold at ~$60,000 to ~$85,000 must have hurt. He probably ate negative gross margin on both homes.)