So is that cheap, or will cost a lot to take care and fix the house? Also seems Maryland has high crime?
Baltimore to Sell Hundreds of Vacant Homes to Residents for Just $1 (businessinsider.com)
Well considering the cost of labor is quite high in the US (but I’m sure there’s a ready supply of cheap labor at your local Home Depot), and also the work must be done to code, it won’t be cheap.
Also high crime, and Maryland having strict gun laws, means you can’t go around doing armed neighborhood watch with your AR15.
So buyers beware.
Have you seen The Wire? It’s not a documentary but Baltimore city shenanigans are no joke.
Unless you know the city of Baltimore very, very well and have owned rental property before, I’d advise against it. Even at $1.
You could easily end up owning property that’s slowly sinking into the Chesapeake Bay. Or a structure on land that floods. Hooking into city services (gas, water, trash) could invite squatters to move in, and in the People’s Republic of Maryland tenants have powerful rights. Could take years to evict, unless you know somebody.
I’d be very, very careful. Maryland is not business friendly unless you know somebody. It’s a state that’s fed on the tit of the US government ever since 1865, especially the DoD.
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This sounds great! Here in the Republic of China, a landlord can tell tenants “my nephew is returning from the US” and we are then forced out of our home.
Source: this happened to my friend.
Guy
Did your friend sign a lease?
There’s definitely a tenant’s-rights argument to be made, but the OP isn’t interested in renting property. Different discussion.
The point about squatters assuming tenant rights illegally is a real thing, especially in urban America
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So this is California, not Maryland. I’m posting it to show how it’s possible for well-intentioned but naive and ill-informed property owners to find themselves way out of their depth in this industry, at least in some US states.
Good points! I guess not really want as a rental place, too much trouble even in Japan haha(Home in Japan are cheap, much cheaper than Taiwan but prices do not go up and some down like a car). Was thinking fixer up house, use for a holiday, but after reading more about Maryland well no. A city in Italy did well with €1 home project, but well USA seems very different, some areas high crime, sky high looking at the numbers.
You have to be a Baltimore resident. Says in the article.
There has to be conditions and such. Otherwise squatters and hobos will just buy it for a dollar and live there. It’s bait and switch.
What is the bait and switch? Seems simple, pay and get a house?
If I have time will watch it, saw it on the airplane listing, maybe will watch it.
Bait and switch means I offer you a widget for say a dollar, a price that is REALLY good, or rather too good to be true. Then when you actually go to buy it there’s all kinds of hidden fees and such to where it ends up being way more expensive.
Which is what these 1 dollar/1 euro/1 pound houses are. It isn’t a dollar and the hidden fees (or in the case of a house, “approved” contractor that charges way more for the work than anyone else) add up to more than the cost of buying an actual house. Anytime someone offers a house for a dollar/euro/pound it means there’s every reason why people don’t want to live there. If the place is desirable, no bait and switch tactic is needed.
In the case of the US, there are plenty of houses in poverty stricken part of the country that are quite cheap, as in less than 10,000 dollars in some cases. These houses are not fit to live in, and they are located in areas where there is no reason to be there (jobs and such), or in locations where you really shouldn’t be there (high crime, hostile community, etc.)
Bait and switch is illegal for a reason.
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“Those buying the homes within the program have to promise to renovate the property and have at least $90,000 to fix it.”
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Also do you have to pay for all this out of pocket, or will banks mortgage this?
A lot of money to fix a cheap house! City looks like its also in bad condition, crime and its older with bad roads.
From the Sun article:
Owners must also move in within a year and stay in the home for at least five years.
However, [City Council President Nick] Mosby argued that without written protections, city residents won’t be given priority in the buying process and will be pushed out when the neighborhoods improve.
“If affordability and affordable home ownership and equity and all of the nice words we like to use are really at the core competency as it relates to property disposition, this is a really bad policy,” he said.
“This is a bad policy because it doesn’t protect or prioritize the rights of folks in these communities.”
Yeah. If the Baltimore City Council president is against the policy because the houses might be sold to non-residents, it’s not a good sign. He’s making very similar objections to those made by Rep. Sandy Cortez (she goes by AOC now) when Cortez objected to Amazon creating a headquarters campus in her district.
To be clear, Baltimore is not in her district; what I’m comparing are her opinions and the opinions stated by Mosby in the Sun article.
So what can happen is that an inner-city politician like Mosby may be able to make possible slow, or no response times by the Baltimore Police Department to homes owned by “outsiders.” He may also be inclined to finagle non-enforcement of squatters in homes not owned by Baltimore residents. He may be able to sway the Baltimore DA not to prosecute other crimes committed there, as a deterrent to “outside” investment. He may bring spurious criminal charges in an attempt to threaten and bleed outsiders financially. He can probably get up to a lot of mischief, and he can probably get away with it if Baltimore voters agree with him. We’ve seen exactly this kind of thing happen in Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, Chicago, NYC, San Francisco, and other cities.
I would be worried that, as an outsider, I would be outside the law in Baltimore.
Did it?
Everything ive ever seen/read about this says it wasnt worth it. The deal was that you had to use local contractors and that came with a lot of problems.
Terms and conditions aren’t the same as bait and switch.
This isn’t a new phenomenon there. Back in 2015 I visited Baltimore and met with the govt officials who launched “vacants to value” a program for the city to sell derelict vacant housing for very cheap (maybe sub 10k). At least in the first couple years the model was working well. They got investors to put money into the community, turn vacant homes into useful assets, and then get these properties back on the tax rolls. I haven’t read this article yet but I imagine it’s more of the same on a larger scale. (and similar to other programs around the world that have had varying degrees of success)
Question is, let’s say someone wants to take up on these cheap offers but they need a lot of work, will banks mortgage for the work, or do you actually need the money up front?