Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Holy Cheap Houses!

A quick search on MLS Matrix this morning reveals that North Minneapolis currently has:

470 homes for sale listed UNDER $100,000;

234 homes for sale listed UNDER $50,000;

and 36 homes for sale listed UNDER $25,000.


This is mind-boggling.


Here's a photo of one from the third category:


I think it's pretty cute... especially considering the fact that it's about the price of my first decent (used) car.

7 comments:

Margaret said...

It's not that cheap if it's a teardown job. I've heard that a lot of these $25,000 jobs are toxic waste dumps or places that have been stripped of copper. You'd be better off buying a vacant lot. I am sure enterprising folk like yourself will be checking them out.

Ranty said...

Being stripped of copper in no way means that a home needs to be torn down! Copper isn't THAT expensive, and non-copper PEX is even cheaper.

And sure, a few of these houses are in really bad shape - but NOT all of them.

As for toxic waste dumps, I have yet to encounter one of those...

Greg said...

Yea, boy, where does Margaret live. That house would be a steal for $25,000 just about any place. That is unless you are foolish enough to get a sub-prime loan with a CPB in 2 years.


{CPB = Crippling Balloon Payment}

Margaret said...

If this house is just a house on a block that is anchored by homeowner dwellers, then maybe there is some potential there, I agree. But I doubt it. IMHO, there are far too many of these tiny shacks and far too few people willing to take them on, to fix up, to live in or both. (More power to those that do!) What cities should do with this decline is encourage teardowns and replat areas for larger single family homes. And I'm not talking mcmansions either. A freind of ours rehabbed a place in camden and on that block were houses as small as 500 square feet. There just aren't that many people willing to live in a tiny house like that in a dodgy block and there are still far too many vacant houses of this type. I am not holding my breath for this kind of development though.

I agree, that it would be wise for somebody who is interested in this kind of project to check these places out, there probably are diamonds in the rough.

Ranty said...

I understand what you're saying Margaret, and you're right that there are many very small houses out there. (Both on the north and south sides.)

But several are also NOT small. The two I saw yesterday were about 1500 and 3000 square feet respectively. (And the latter had an unfinished walk-up attic which could be finished for even more space.)

These are the houses that I really want to save. The super-tiny ones... well... okay, I'd like to save those too but I'm not holding my breath on getting lots of support with that.

Change is inevitable in all neighborhoods and in all things.

But at the same time I am a preservationist, and it breaks my heart to see a 120-year-old Victorian razed just because someone triplexed it and slapped some nasty siding on it and now the copper is gone and the yard is full of trash... these homes are a part of our city's history and I believe they have value which makes them worth saving.

Anonymous said...

very cute house
try this also
cheap houses

Richard Peacock said...

Yep! I love victorian's, mansards & old farm houses as well! I can not believe how cheap they are in Pennsylvania, some places in Vermont & Maine! I am looking into getting one of them at this very moment as we blog... -Richard