Cheap Houses For
Sale
by
Steven Gillman
We found
cheap houses for sale all over the country. My wife Ana and I were on a
seven-week drive around the country. It was a vacation, but we looked
at houses too, and bought one in a great little town in the mountains
of western Montana. It cost $17,500, and after $2000 to fix it up, we
lived there for several months before selling it for $28,000.
We loved
Anaconda. Where else can you fly fish, go to a three-dollar movie in a
beautiful old art-deco theatre (the 5th most beautiful in the country,
according to the Smithsonian), drop some nickles in a slot machine, eat
at a fine restaurant, stop by the bar for a dollar beer, and buy a
house for under $30,000 - all within a four block area! There are good
schools and churches, a library with fast internet service, and
wildlife (including bears) a few hundred yards from downtown.
Why
Are There Cheap Houses For Sale?
There
are cheap houses in Anaconda, and nearby Butte because there aren't
many good jobs. I easily found jobs in Anaconda - but not good ones.
This explains why people left the area in the 80's, after the mines and
smelters closed.
Thirteen
percent of the "housing units" in Anaconda are vacant, according to the
2000 U.S. census. This has driven down the home prices dramatically.
Since it still has all the basic ammenities, is cleaner now, and is
slowly recovering, it's a great place to retire to or to move to if you
have an internet or other non-location-based business.
A poor
local economy is the reason you can buy cheap houses in many parts of
the country. These are towns that have seen troubled times, but are
often recovering, sometimes with good reasons. Anaconda, for example,
now has, in addition to it's beautiful mountain scenery, a ski resort
and a Jack Nicholas golf course. Houses cost four times as much an hour
in any direction, and those prices are bound to reach Anaconda
eventually.
Cheap
Houses You Don't Want To Buy
There
are towns like the one in South Dakota where we stopped for lunch one
day. A bulletin board had ads for cheap houses for sale by desperate
people trying not to be the last to leave town. There was a photo of a
beautiful old five-bedroom farmhouse for $11,000. As we ate, we looked
up the deserted street and noticed that most of the buildings were
boarded-up. This was a dying town, with nothing to help revive it. A
free house wouldn't be a good enough reason to move here.
Cheap
House For Sale - Our Criteria
There
are many wonderful towns, from Florida to Oregon, where there are cheap
houses for sale. After our Montana experience, we started a website
about them. What does a town need in order to make our list? The
criteria are certainly subjective, but include at least the following:
1.
Population of 4,000 to 80,000.
2. Decent library.
3. Good grocery store.
4. Movie theatre.
5. At least six houses for sale under $50,000.
6. The town has a good "feel" to it.
After
much research, we found a number of towns that met our criteria,
including some with homes for under $30,000. There really are nice
towns out there where you can find cheap houses for sale.
Steve
Gillman has invested in real estate for years. See a photo of a
beautiful house he and his wife bought for $17,500 on his home page, or
go straight to the section on Investing
In Real Estate: http://www.HousesUnderFiftyThousand.com
Low
Cost Houses
by
Steven Gillman
How
do you find low cost houses? Look in the right towns,to begin with.
Then you can find the houses you like and make an offer. Where are the
right towns?
Altoona,
Pennsyvania still had dozens of homes for sale for less than $30,00 as
I write this (2005). I just saw one listed for $7,500! This is a cute
little town (see the photo on our site), yet still big enough to have
everything you need.
Hot
Springs, Arkansas has low cost houses. The cheapest right now is
$13,500. My wife and I like Alamogordo, New Mexico a lot, and it still
has homes under $50,000. Independence, Kansas has homes starting under
$10,000!
How
To Find Low Cost Houses
You
can look up various local newspapers online, and check out the
classifieds. This also assures you that it's a town large enough for a
newspaper. If there are at least a dozen houses for sale, you'll have
an idea about home prices there.
You
can find real estate agents online, or in local paper classifieds. Call
one and ask if there are any low cost houses for sale. If not maybe
he'll know which nearby towns have some.
You
can go to www.Realtor.com, where you can search any town for homes
listed by price, number of bedrooms, and many other criteria. This tool
is a lot of fun. Set the criteria to select only homes under fifty
thousand or whatever you want, and you'll quickly see if you're wasting
your time on a town.
Of
course, if you don't see many low cost houses, you still might be able
to get one. When we lived in Anaconda, Montana, where we bought our own
beautiful house for $17,500, we watched as a house listed for $18,000
eventually sold for $6,000! Towns that have had some economic troubles
often have house selling for far under their listed price. The lesson
is clear: make low offers to get low cost houses.
