This is a local example of the bigger problem.
You'll see the local bank's front page, quaint as it is, with a list of properties for sale. This has been a recent addition to the web site, by the way.
Look at listing #7, asking $108,000. I walk into the bank, and it's advertised in a circular on the table where customers fill out their deposit slips--zero money down, bank financing at 5%, 8K tax credit for first-time home buyers, the whole shooting match. No takers, the flyer has been there for many weeks, updated with the tax credit offer.
Visit the house, and you find it's a block off a busy highway, overlooking used car lots, the back side of the former Wal-Mart location, a tattoo parlor, surrounded by weedy lots, eroding at a healthy clip. A true Jim-the-Realtor moment.
This could never have been intended as an owner-occupant property. With mortgage, insurance and taxes totalling well over $750 a month, no one can rent it for a profit.
Something will have to give, (like about $50,000 off the asking price), and it will be a rental for some person of very modest income, or it will have to be torn down.
The list on the bank's site is growing.
And this is Tennessee, not California.
No comments:
Post a Comment