$500 houses

An interesting phenomenon has begun to emerge in Detroit.  Housing resellers have cropped up preying on poor and unsuspecting people looking to get into the housing market who couldn't otherwise. A company pays a cheap price for an abandoned home at an auction and then resells the property to someone who could not otherwise afford to purchase something through a more traditional means of home ownership.


Most home showings begin with a key in a lock. This one on Salem Street begins with a squeeze of a bolt cutter.
Owner Keith Hudson wades through a waist-high lawn, pinches off the front door's Master lock and calls, "Knock, knock," unsure if he'll encounter squatters or wild animals inside.
There are none. There's also no furnace, water heater or electrical wiring, and sunlight beams through gaps in the walls. This isn't just the prospective buyers' first peek at the vacant two-story on the west side. It's Hudson's, too. And 30 minutes after the walk-through, Hudson sells it to a family of six for $2,750.
He and his partners at BenjiGates Estates bought the house for $500 at the Wayne County Treasurer tax auction last year and have become one of the new faces of the real-estate market that's blossomed in Detroit from the foreclosure crisis.


From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110701/METRO01/107010393/Market-big-for-foreclosed--rundown-Detroit-homes#ixzz1Qsg2AYux