$1000 Houses in USA

Online Stock Trades - Buy a House for $1000

Homes for Sale

Is this the bottom in the Real Estate Market?

If you’ve got some cash then this could be the time to be getting back in to the real estate market. You can now buy a house in some parts of the USA for $1000.

According to Realtor.com there are houses for sale in Flint, Michigan, Indianapolis, Cleveland, and Detroit for under $3,000, most of them are foreclosures of course and are being sold by the lenders that repossessed them. (Couldn’t they have sold them to the people already living in them for $3000 ? – I guess it’s that old principle of not bailing out poor people.)

To see what I could get if I lived in the US I went to Realtor.com and searched for houses in Cleveland between $1000 and $3000 - it came back with 42 properties includng the one pictured here for $2000 (no I don't get a commission for listing it).

According to Heather Fernandez, speaking for Trulia.com "Foreclosures have turned banks into property management companies. And it's often cheaper for them to give these homes away rather than try to get market value for them."

In Detroit a three-bedroom, one-bath bungalow of about 1,000 sq. feet is up for sale at just $500. It needs totally refurbishing, at an estimated cost of $15,000 - $20,000. But it last sold for $72,000 at the end of 2007.

Lenders are no longer trying to make money on these deals. They just want to get rid of them, to avoid maintenance costs and property taxes.

In fact, lenders are often paying realtors to list the properties and the small amounts of money made on the sale are going straight to the real estate brokers as commission.

The houses are almost always in need to refurbishing – requiring wiring, plumbing, new heating systems etc... etc... Lots of people who are being foreclosed have a very low opinion of bankers and make sure they trash the house before they are thrown out.

It is often a legal requirement for buyers to refurbish these homes to make sure they comply with building regulations. In Detroit, for example, buyers need to carry out work before they can get a ‘certificate of occupancy’ without which the house is not legally inhabitable.

But despite these costs they are still bargains.

In Cleveland, McMullen Realty has a four-bedroom, one-and-a-half bath house for $1,900. It has been visited by vandals, but it is structurally sound.

It was last sold in March 2008 for $16,677 !

According to Tonya Stoudamire of Zillow.com "East Cleveland has a beautiful housing stock. These houses just need someone to come in and love them a little."

In Birmingham Alabama you can get a fire-damaged 1923 one-bedroom, one bathroom home for .

Comparable homes in good condition sell for about $100,000.

So if you are thinking about splashing out with your credit card but are worried about the refurbishing costs you should also bear in mind that buyers can sometimes get government help to finance repairs.

Check out the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for details.

So if you’ve got some cash and don’t mind doing up some run-down houses then this could be a good time to get in at the bottom. Warren Buffett’s maxim of ‘be greedy when other people are fearful’ may well apply to the real estate market as well as the stockmarket.

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