What $1 buys among historic properties

The $1 house is not unique to Detroit, although there are a lot of them for sale in the Motor City to local government. Under HUD’s Good Neighbor Program, properties offered to the public for sale for six or more months are removed from the market and proffered for $1 plus closing costs.

It appears to be a popular program. Michigan and Ohio were buying up so many $1 houses this year that HUD put a halt of sales in April so they could look into what local governments were doing with the properties, reported the Columbus Dispatch. But this is not a deal offered to the public or even directly to nonprofits.

Regular folks can find $1 deals, however. The houses just usually don’t include any land. Among the strings attached, buyers must pay to have the houses moved. The Angelino Heights home featured recently as the Home of the Week was one such $1 prize in 1978 before it was moved to its current site. It's listed today for $1,495,000.

If having a site and paying moving expenses are not deterrents to you, HistoricProperties.com lists a $1 house in South Bend, Indiana, and two in Lynchburg, Va. Still too steep? A Windsor, N.Y., farmhouse lists for $0. Not everything on the site is so inexpensive, but it’s pretty amazing what can be bought for about the price of an automobile. Tough luck for the Western U.S., though. The search unearthed no such gems.

-- Lauren Beale

Thoughts? Comments?
Photo caption: A home in Angelino Heights. Some historic homes have been moved to Carroll Avenue, a street in that Echo Park neighborhood, and preserved.
Photo credit: Annie Wells / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Castles in Scotland]

About real estate in Europe: prices change so fast that you just can’t keep the track of all the changes. New members of European Union still have quite cheap property for sale. Example: you can buy a land and a house near the sea for 10.000 Euro in Bulgaria.. At the same time prices for houses in Ukraine, Kiev are higher than luxury villas’ cost in California. What can I say? Now it seems to be expensive to invest into property at some moment, but later it becomes reasonable action.