Steal this house - foreclosure neighborhoods
 

I'm presuming this isn't a DC thread, but I thought it was interesting. They show one house for sale in each of ten hard-hit housing markets.

Looking through them, which one would you buy if you were going to retire and had to buy one of them? Poll coming if I can only get the bank off my back.

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2012/...mes/index.html

Too bad this is in Detroit. I like brick.

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/money/galle...es/detroit.jpg

Definitely NOT the one in Detroit!

This one:

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/money/galle...es/chicago.jpg

Bought our house as a foreclosure. It was an absolute steal.

It needed a little TLC...nothing I had to hire-out to get done. When/If we buy again, I will def. check out the foreclosures first...

Phoenix

I'd never choose to live east of the Mississippi or in California. I'd take Phoenix before Las Vegas.

I was trying to figure out if that's real brick or a veneer. Given the era of the house I'd lean toward real brick, but something about it doesn't look real.

I'd have a very hard time living east of the river, too. I suspect there are places I'd like, but I'm ignorant about them.

I think the Vegas one seems like a screaming steal if you were going to live there. Even if not, if a dozen of us got together and formed a corporation, it seems like something like this would be a good speculative investment. Rent it out until the market recovers and then sell it.

If you want to live in LA, that Lancaster one seems like a deal, too.

It looks to me like some builder used all the various leftover brick from his previous dozen or so houses. I love brick but that is freaking ugly.

I've been considering the corporation angle as well. There are never any guarantees, but it might be a good time to buy.

And to answer the question, I suppose since we're talking about retirement where I could sit inside in the air conditioning all summer long I'd go Vegas. Yes, it's a desert shithole but it's fairly close to some very cool places. No way I'd go south or to the west coast.

No one here is brave enough to move from their comfortable, uneventful lives to move to LA. It's OK, the world has to have a balance between winners and losers, and without lower class people like those that live around Kansas City and Missouri and aren't brave enough to venture somewhere real, we wouldn't have garbage people and the people that make shoes.[/DaneMcCloud]

I'd sit tight on buying any foreclosure. The robo-signing fiasco that was recently resolved is going to dump a boat load of foreclosures on the market. They're expecting a minimum of another 10+% price reduction.

Phoenix because there are a shit ton of old people who will look to retire in the south. My other thought was Florida, but why relocate and have to deal with Hurricanes.