Friday, Aug 15, 2008
I'll buy that for a dollar!
The Daily Telegraph: House sold for $1 in sign of US property crisis
In a sign of how desperate the property crisis has become in parts of the US, a foreclosed house in Detroit has sold for just one dollar – around 50 pence. But even at that bargain price, the two-storey, lawn-fringed house on the city's impoverished east side took 19 days to sell.
Posted by timelash @ 06:05 AM (625 views) Add Comment
8 Comments
- If you do not have an admin password leave the password field blank.
- If you would like to request a password allowing you to add comments and blog news articles without needing each one approved manually, send an e-mail to the webmaster.
- Your email address is required so we can verify that the comment is genuine. It will not be posted anywhere on the site, will be stored confidentially by us and never given out to any third party.
- Please note that any viewpoints published here as comments are user's views and not the views of HousePriceCrash.co.uk.
- Please adhere to the Guidelines
1. musn't grumble said...
Got a machine gun timelash?
2. mark said...
rates etc still have to be paid...
3. japanese uncle said...
The risk of becoming a victim of crime in a deserted part of the economically devastated town could be huge. Maybe minus $50000 (money payable in return for taking the house) should be the right price.
4. jonb said...
There was another article yesterday about this one.
You are going to have to practically rebuild it, and property taxes are pretty expensive; so I wouldn't pay $1 for it.
5. last_days_of_disco said...
Agreed, sitting down and working it out you come to the conclusion that its actually going to cost you about $15-20K and then you have to rent it to someone who
will protect it from being "raped" again.
6. inbreda said...
4. jonb said...
so I wouldn't pay $1 for it.
My thinking is that the parcel of land is probably worth buying. It has been said on here before that it is not so much houses that are overvalued as the land they sit on. In the crash maybe it is a good idea to buy the most derelict of properties so that you don't have to do maintenance (rather than buying a nice house and letting it fall into disrepair). Admittedly you would still have taxes (or maybe not if you demolished?) and in the next boom you could sell the plot of building land at a profit.
7. jonb said...
I can look up yesterday's article again, but I believe property taxes are something like $5,900 per year on it. That alone is worth more than I would be prepared to pay for it.
I believe there are some provisions for getting it revalued, but I don't know how it works.
8. Timelash said...
mustn't grumble:
I wouldn't seriously buy it. I was just quoting a line from Robocop.