Discussion summary
A Reddit discussion about US government homes under $100k highlights potential hidden costs and risks, with some users skeptical about the value and transparency of such properties.
What the discussion says
- Some users warn about hidden debts and costs associated with these homes.
- Others criticize the post for clickbait and misleading information.
- Several comments suggest the properties may be suitable for building or renovation.
- A few users emphasize the difficulty in valuing real estate sight unseen.
“Buying these homes can come with massive debt attached, making it a ripoff.”
“The post might promote misunderstandings among casual readers.”
Join the discussion
Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.
- Hacker News
- OP, your site makes for nice reading, but that quantity-sorted list of states to filter by is kind of maddening to work with. Alphabetical recommended :)by altairprime
- The crazy thing about residential property in 21st-century USA is that it's always a money pit.
A few hundred years ago, it was commonplace for the middle- and upper-classes to own large estates, and these estates were expected to be assets that earn money. You would hire staff, and tenant farmers, or have slaves or whatever cadres of workers to work the land, be shepherds, and basically produce revenue for the lords or owners of the estates. This was not only a UK phenomenon but continued in the USA.
Unfortunately, in modern times, there are zoning laws, business licensing, insurance, and many things to militate against homeowners using their homes as businesses or assets or generators of revenue. You can't exactly have a public entrance and signage in a HOA neighborhood and your neighbors gonna be pissed if random stranger-customers are pulling up in their cars all day and walking up to your front door to buy merchandise or to use a service that you offer from your private residence.
But nevertheless, this commercialization happens all the time. I didn't realize how crazy widespread it is until I started paying attention in Google Maps. There are dozens of "cottage industries" in every neighborhood. It's probably exactly the reason why "McMansions" and excessively large homes are popular, even as fertility shrinks and people aren't having kids, they still want room at home for their entrepreneurship and home office, doing whatever business they go into for themselves.
I have seen little family farms that sell "raw milk" and mutton and fresh eggs, basically on the DL for your Venmo or Cashapp payments. Across the valley there is literally an arms dealer who sells out of his garage, and only a few blocks from a school. There are people fighting their HOA, tooth and nail, because the HOA is enforcing their rules about signage, or giveaways, or something, and these people are even featured on the evening news and portrayed as "innocent HOA victim" when in fact, they're trying to illicitly run a business out of their garage and gin-up foot traffic for that business from passers-by in a SFH residential-zoned neighborhood.
So yeah, a home that your family lives in, that's in a residential-zoned area, of the United States, that's guaranteed to have "negative value" because you'll always be pouring money into its taxes, upkeep, and maintenance. And that's exactly why most homeowners decide to actually start a business and use that property, in a grey area, to earn money rather than throwing it all away.
- I watched the show Bridgerton, and I was shocked when the main characters just dilly-dallied all day. Turns out they had estates that made money for them.
- > There are people fighting their HOA, tooth and nail, because the HOA is enforcing their rules about signage, or giveaways, or something, and these people are even featured on the evening news and portrayed as "innocent HOA victim" when in fact, they're trying to illicitly run a business out of their garage and gin-up foot traffic for that business from passers-by in a SFH residential-zoned neighborhood.
Isn't this just taking the perspective of the HOA? Mixed use zoning is a completely reasonable policy. The status quo shouldn't be used for normative determinations. At which point you have busybody HOAs lobbying for restrictive residence-only zoning and then harassing sympathetic small business owners who are just trying to make a living.
by AnthonyMouse - > little family farms that sell "raw milk" and mutton and fresh eggs, basically on the DL
There's a decent amount of that going on in my neighborhood (Dallas TX). The reason it's on the DL is because nothing is pasteurized let alone inspected by the local health department. Some people prefer raw milk as being more natural but pasteurization was invented for a reason. I stay away from it.
by chasd00 - There's so much wrong with this comment. First, middle class _by definition_ did not have large estates that earned incomes for them.
Second, it's weird to throw in an "unfortunately" after pointing out that the only thing that enabled this was exploitative labor practices (including slavery!)
Third, most homeowners do not actually start a business and use their property to earn money.
Fourth, the home doesn't have a negative value. It has a resale value often quite substantial, and you are living in it while you're paying all those maintainence costs.
by empath75 - To paint a picture in your mind, this is the digital equivalent of being a rag & bone man scraping by to find a place to live somewhere, anywhere, across the country. Demand better of yourself if you're going to attempt to go to such lengths.by bellowsgulch
- How does this work?
I hover the mouse over a dot and a pop-up appears nearby, but when move the mouse away from the dot to click the bubble, the bubble closes.
by bobmcnamara - Apologies, clicking on the dot should also take you to the listing.by player_piano
- I'm guessing since the map is price limited there are likely many more properties out west except they are higher priced? $800 for a small chunk of vacant land behind something industrial near what looks like a lonely highway exit somewhere inland California. Then the East half has lots of reasonable looking homes. I hope the people left behind and homeless are getting by.by skyberrys
- Correct, there are about 3,000 real estate listings right now on the main site: https://govauctions.app/feed?category=real-estateby player_piano
- Do you pull data from non-HUD sources too?
- The data are from HUD, Fannie Mae HomePath, and Freddie Mac HomeSteps. There's a methodology section towards the bottom of the page.by player_piano
- Why go to all this trouble? Just go to realtor.com (no relationship) and enter your desired parameters thusly: https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/Oakland_CA...by mlmonkey
- Over the weekend, I pulled some data from my website to find the cheapest homes you can buy from the US federal government. The outliers (a $3,000 house in Flint, MI) are often in quite a state of disrepair, but there are lots of...lots...which are in reasonable condition across many US states.by player_piano
- Well, yes, I have in fact always dreamed of owning an abandoned house in Flint, MIby airstrike
- A few years ago an apartment in my building was up for a foreclosure sale. Price looked good but turned out it was literally impossible to figure out (1) how much or the original dead beat's mortgage i would be on the hook for (2) tax burden and (3) unpaid coop fees i would owe.
So even as finance save person already in the building, it was impossible to figure out what I'd be getting/owing. Really ruined my taste for these things.
by xyzelement - Years ago when I was thinking of moving, I started looking at houses with my real estate agent. I started asking about foreclosure sales and he said the same thing. Seller and seller's agent will try and obfuscate the numbers to make it look attractive and essentially "stick" the buyer with something that costs way more than its worth.
- It's crazy how this isn't simple. Surely all they have to do is to tally up the debts secured by the apartment, then sell the apartment and use the money to pay as much of the debts as possible. Any remaining debt is the lender's loss, that's the risk they take when giving out loans.
If any debt does need to be tied to the apartment rather than the person, then it simply needs to be registered in a publicly (easily) accessible way. If someone fails to register their debt in a timely manner then it should be forfeit. It should be registered at the time it takes effect. Lender should be responsible for making sure the registration is complete before giving out the debt, if someone takes out a loan then sells it before the debt has been registered that's the lender's problem. They can't retroactively add a lien to my property because the previous owner took a loan when it was their property. That's not reasonable. If the lien is not registered then it doesn't exist, it should be that simple.
by sfn42 - I've gained a taste for a yt channel that shows depopulated towns across the US.
It seems to me that local governments must also have tons of properties to sell or give away. The real issue is that these are in places where people don't usually want to live.
by forinti - Peter Santenello does a great job of this.by rd
- Not simply "don't want to live here", usually also "can't, there are no opportunities for income here". I know lots of people optimistic that remote work would upend this, but even the few still-fully-remote workers I know need to live in areas where they or their family can find non-remote jobs if ever necessary.by xvedejas
- It's hard to actually use this map and inspect individual homes. Clicking into a listing replaces the map view, so you lose the context of where you were looking, and the way the dots animate in make it harder to visually remember where you were. And you can't zoom in further to distinguish multiple overlapping properties.by pimlottc
- Yes, sorry, the map UI could be better. You can zoom in to the state level, which hopefully will help a little with not losing context.by player_piano