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.

I see Michael Jordan is trying to dump his house, for a cool 29 Million.

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/money/galle...n-exterior.jpg

I am sure there are similarly priced listings here in KC! For the prices listed here, I would live on Independence Avenue, Prospect, Troost, whatever!

In 1987, right after my divorce and looking for a house this co worker of mine was boasting about this $220,000 foreclosed house they bought for around 80K. I started getting serious about that avenue. But my dad advised that a house like that will always have a "grudging eye" (direct translation) on it and would not be a happy house. I took his advice and abandoned looking for foreclosed houses. I still feel uneasy about living in a house that was forcefully taken away from its previous owner although I'm somewhat reconsidering.

Do some of you feel this way or do you consider this line of thinking simple superstition?

Honestly, no. If the price is right, go for it.

Both. I believe that strongly held superstition can influence the superstition holder's reaction to normal things, places, and events, thereby causing the superstition to appear to be well founded. Your father almost certainly would not have been happy in that house, but the house itself would not be the cause.

Have to be careful about the property taxes. The local governments are probably still going to be charging for the assessed value, not the actual value.

I want this house. It was priced at 30 million but someone pick it up for 14 million.

<object style="height: 390px; width: 640px"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/NDu-y3-GIVo?version=3&feature=player_embedded"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/NDu-y3-GIVo?version=3&feature=player_embedded" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="640" height="360"></object>

Lawrenceville, GA is a good location so it would be a good buy.

Phoenix, its on my radar of possible retirement destinations decades from now, and they got winter ball and spring training baseball.

That Lancaster, California one for $154k is a hell of a deal. 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, decent sized plot, and it's right outside of L.A. It was worth about 3.5 times more only 5 years ago.

Bob Dole lived about 7 miles from the Vegas one. Not a bad part of town at all. At least back then.
Posted via Mobile Device

Lancaster is the only one big enough for our family.

My son (in Atlanta) just proposed to his GF. They are in Atlanta, she with her parents, he sharing rent. Maybe I should alert them to this. Where can one get more info on this?

I bought my house foreclosed. $50 per square foot plus a big workshop in the back yard. I couldn't have began to build it myself for that money. We feel very blessed.

I'd like to stay out west so Phoenix or maybe Vegas house but I voted Phoenix...

The house in Vegas... definitely! :thumb:

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/money/galle...-las-vegas.jpg

I love the entry archway! When I was younger, I drew floor plans and that was one of the things the majority of my plans included. That, and a water feature in the foyer.

It could be brick, but something doesn't look right. It looks like they replaced some of the bricks over the years and did a horrible job finding new ones to match the originals.

Chicago....closest to home and Lollapalooza. However, I HATE the Cubs, so seeing Cubs fans on a routine basis would get annoying quick.

Kind of ironic to me that this thread was started today. I closed on a foreclosure house in November (small town Iowa). Tonight is officially my first night staying there. The reason for this is because the house was originally heated by a boiler and boiler lines/radiators. We were all set and ready to move stuff in 2 days after closing when we turned the water on. When we turned the water on, the place became a tropical freaking rain forest. Turns out, every water line and boiler line had burst. On top of this, the ceiling and wall in the basement caved in. Almost everything in my downstairs bathroom became destroyed. We also found out that the refrigerator and dishwasher were shot (when the realtor told us it was top notch). There were 10 different locations in the house with the phrase, "winterized in December 2010" written on it, including; valves, the boiler itself, faucets, etc. There were also 2 papers, 1 upstairs, 1 downstairs that indicated that the inspection was good. The realtor did not offer any inspections (and I am under the impression that they are supposed to and that it is an ethical violation if they don't) and basically just informed me that the inspection papers and winterization stickers were legit.

ANYWAYS, we had to put a whole new heating system in. We now have central heat and there is all kinds of baseboard trim damage throughout my house due to having to gut the radiators. I still have no ceiling in my basement. When they removed the boiler, the plumbers discovered that the thing was half-full of water still..... awesome freaking winterizing job, eh?

This has cost me an additional 10k+ that I hadn't originally budgeted for already. To say the absolute least, this isn't over yet.

Landscatter, home of meth labs and charles mason wanta-be's......priceless at best....good luck with that

I once ran into a Charles Manson wannabe. Or maybe a Charles Manson "fanatic" is a better way of putting it. He had the same hair style, tatoo, facial hair, look, etc. as Charles Manson and to top it off, he was wearing a Charles Manson t-shirt. We were at a bar and I made it a point to talk to the dude if he ever came near me. I was in college at the time, with one of my majors being in Psychology. Back then, I still considered people who appeared as if they could have some psychological issues to be interesting. 8 years later, they annoy the piss out of me. This guy didn't seem to have any friends at the bar. He just seemed to kind of lurk around the entire night. Later in the night, he stood next to me while we were both ordering a beer. I looked at him and said, "Charles Manson, eh?" He was like, "yep." I then said something like, "I hear he was a pretty influential force on the 'family' he compiled." He responded with, "he's the smartest man in the world." I (expecting him to go on more of an elaborated rant) stated, "yeah, I guess I have heard that he had an above average IQ." The dude then responded with, "y-y-yeah, y-y-you w-will never know l-l-like I do, h-how smart he is." At the time, I felt like I knew a lot about the dude, I had read Helter Skelter by that time, I had read the Manson biography on thecrimelibrary.com, I had seen various clips on him, including an A&E Biography and the infamous Giraldo Rivera interview. Although I find these Manson-type stories interesting to an extent, I definitely am not a fan of these types of people like this guy obviously was.... from what I gathered about Manson, he seemed like an egotistical, antisocial, manipulative $hitwad. I remember finally asking the dude, "well, how do you know so much about him, homeslice? Do you visit him? Do you write each other?" Dude just started shaking and walked away from me. All in all, I thought this guy was going to be all rant-happy, but he ended up being just a timid dork. Timid dork.... hmmm, sounds like someone we all know...? I wonder if Noodle-arm Casserole is a Charles Manson fan?

Anyways, so there are Manson wannabes in Lancaster, eh? That would be pretty....annoying... running into diarrhea-mouths all the time.

I have no taste
that looks like a medical building

Yeah, that just looks bizarre.

It's not my thing but I guess I'd live there. In this country most of us call them thar medical buildings, "hospitals".

Okay
It looks like a looney bin retreat

Exactly. I was gonna say something like this but couldn't come up what kind of building.

Agreed.

I think at some size point, it's difficult to design a house that looks like a home and not a commercial building. This is over that limit.

If a person is dead set on building a house that's over about 20,000 feet, I think they should recognize the fact that it won't look like a house and they should embrace the commercial look or they should just go with something funky. Make it look like a hotel or a resort instead of a hospital if you're going with the commercial look. Otherwise, go funky so people don't immediately identify it as commercial. Do a big dome or a giant railroad car or build it up the side of a cliff.