Mapping homes you can buy from the US government for <$100k
govauctions.appIt'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.
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.
You still go back to the complete map when you navigate back out of a listing, so it doesn't really help much. The state-level zoom helps a little but it's not enough to distinguish markers in the same city, for example.
Looks like they deliberately broke the browser's "Open in new tab" function, which could have solved this problem.
Also please don't break the back button
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.
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.
It's not even just wanting jobs for family; it's wanting to be around services that I think people don't always consider. Sure, you could plan on doing everything yourself if that's truly your hobby, but most remote workers will want to be able to call a plumber or an electrician when something goes wrong, and even finding tradesmen in those locations can sometimes be challenging.
The clawing back of remote jobs is pretty astounding. More places are 3 days a week I guess. But the idea of living out in the country with no one around, but with your remote job is nearly fantasy. You have to be very sure that if push comes to shove, you won't ever be laid off, fired, company closes, etc.
> You have to be very sure that if push comes to shove, you won't ever be laid off, fired, company closes, etc
I’ve been remote-only since 2017. In that time I’ve had interruptions in employment three times - it’s not nearly as bleak as this makes it sound.
> You have to be very sure that if push comes to shove, you won't ever be laid off, fired, company closes, etc.
There are plenty of remote first employers. And that's not going to change now.
Or...that you would be comfortable relocating if you did lose your job, helped by the buffer of savings you accumulated by not having to pay for your house?
Lets say housing appreciates +50% everywhere.
Your podunk home went up $50k.
HCOL home went up $500k.
Better deal would be to hold the expensive house.
Now let's say the price collapses by 50%. You're stuck and can't sell in a "frozen" housing market... like how the housing market has been since May 2022. And the problem is structural. And it's only going to get worse as interest rates continue to rise to battle inflation. Here's a nice explainer.
The assumption for a couple of generations has been that housing costs will always increase over time as a percent of wages. The problem with that is that it's unsustainable. The next generation has to be able to afford it in order to buy it, and they also need to buy food and utilities etc., which also cost more when real estate does. Investors can't save you either when the next generation can't afford the rent they would have to charge to turn a profit.
But in order for housing to be a good investment, it has to have competitive returns with other investments, i.e. it needs to increase by at least as much as GDP per capita. Meanwhile median wages have been increasing slower than GDP per capita, which as above is the long-term cap on housing prices. In other words, housing can't long-term sustainably beat other market investments unless wages do, which they haven't, in which case people would get better returns by putting their money in stocks etc.
Worse, years of ZIRP inflated housing prices beyond any sustainable level even with the scarcity being maintained by existing zoning restrictions, i.e. the "eventually it's not sustainable" point is already in the past.
The result is that in order for housing to be a good investment going forward from now, there would first have to be a major housing crash so that "investors" (i.e. home buyers) could buy low instead of buying high. Which thereby implies that it wouldn't be a good long-term investment at current prices. And by major housing crash, notice what "enormous housing bubble that crashed the world economy" looks like on this chart in 2007 and compare it to what things look like since then, especially since 2020:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS
A lot of people haven't realized that the party is over and are expecting housing to still be a good investment.
Nothing you said is wrong, but you could say that in 2013 too, and in that time apparently prices have nearly doubled and you missed out if you didn't take advantage.
Mortgages are "heads I win, tails you lose" in non-recourse states like California. You're not down more than your down payment, but the upside is huge, and for the past fifty years it has been more financially advantageous to use that leverage to buy the most expensive home they will allow you to.
> Nothing you said is wrong, but you could say that in 2013 too, and in that time apparently prices have nearly doubled and you missed out if you didn't take advantage.
In 2013 you couldn't say that prices have nearly doubled since 2013 under ZIRP, which is the argument that buying now would be buying high.
> Mortgages are "heads I win, tails you lose" in non-recourse states like California. You're not down more than your down payment, but the upside is huge, and for the past fifty years it has been more financially advantageous to use that leverage to buy the most expensive home they will allow you to.
You're not down more than your down payment plus whatever principal and interest you've paid since then.
On top of that, it's still leverage. Suppose you buy a $1M house with a $200k down payment and ~$5000/mo going to principal and interest. In five years you've paid out the $200k down payment, another ~$50k in principal and ~$250k in interest. If the value at that point declines by 25% since you bought, you're not down 25%, you're wiped out, -$500k, because you're left with a $750k house where you still owe $750k having already paid $500k. Let's say it's only -$380k because you'd have had to pay $2000/month to rent a smaller apartment in the alternative.
Whereas if you put the $380k into non-leveraged investments and the market declined by 25%, you'd still have $285k instead of $0. If the overall market does better than housing or it was "safe" investments like CDs then you'd still have the entire $380k plus whatever interest it earned. Worse yet, if housing costs declined then your monthly rent would go down but your mortgage is fixed for 30 years.
You could still make the argument that it's worth it to take the leverage if the upside is expected to be large, i.e. you expect the value to keep going up, but suppose you don't.
> In 2013 you couldn't say that prices have nearly doubled since 2013 under ZIRP, which is the argument that buying now would be buying high.
But in 2013 you could say they've nearly doubled since 1998 under ZIRP, and then everything you say applies.
It's also an option on continuing to live in your same COL but a different city, with a nice large house. Worse case, prices fall enough you can afford a new mortgage even if your investment is wiped out. Worst case of renting is you can never buy because houses appreciate faster than you can save. You said
> then you'd still have the entire $380k plus whatever interest it earned.
And it's not enough to buy a house if prices continue up, and you've lived in a cheap (so probably small and undesirable) apartment for years while your friends are building up their household.
> But in 2013 you could say they've nearly doubled since 1998 under ZIRP, and then everything you say applies.
The problematic number is the home price to median household income ratio:
https://www.longtermtrends.com/home-price-median-annual-inco...
In 1998 it was ~4 having been stable in the 4 to ~4.5 range since the late 1970s. By 2013 it was ~5, from being five years into ZIRP. The peak in the housing crisis bubble was 6.8. Right now it's ~7.
> Worse case, prices fall enough you can afford a new mortgage even if your investment is wiped out.
Where are you getting another down payment having been wiped out? The original down payment was $200k. It only takes a 25% decline to wipe you out and even at the lower price you'd need another $150k to get a new mortgage. And just after a crash would be the time to buy, but that's when you'd have just been zeroed out.
You might be better off to keep the existing house even if you're slightly underwater on it, at least then you don't need to sink another down payment, but then you're stuck continuing to pay the mortgage for a million dollar house when it's only worth $750k.
And there is also a third option. Suppose the prices don't move significantly up or down for a while. Then the leverage neither wipes you out nor gives you leveraged returns, but it means you're paying the interest on that $800k loan while getting no return from it.
> Worst case of renting is you can never buy because houses appreciate faster than you can save.
Which is precisely the problem with buying if that's the thing that actually happens to other people. If prospective buyers can't afford to buy your house for the high price anymore then you can't sell it for the high price anymore, so the next thing that happens is that the price comes down.
> And it's not enough to buy a house if prices continue up, and you've lived in a cheap (so probably small and undesirable) apartment for years while your friends are building up their household.
Which is again predicated on the prices continuing to go up. How high can the home price to income ratio get before something gives?
I was thinking the same thing 10 years ago, but people are still buying houses, the stock market keeps going up. It doesn't make sense. But I lost a lot of money not being more heavily invested and buying a house I could easily afford. I also feel like we're a zombie economy that doesn't know it's dead yet, but all I know is somehow I'm going to be screwed and I won't see it coming.
That's the bank's problem.
Aside from all the other objections from this: broadly speaking, if you lose your job and can't get another one, the economy will be bad and house prices will fall.
Not true for absolutely everyone, and as an individual you may feel you can't take this bet even though it's good in aggregate. A great social security system would allow you to take this bet without paying out too much to people who always made bad choices.
If there are no good doctors, dentists, schools, stores, and so in within reasonable distance then life kind of sucks even if you aren't concerned about money/other jobs.
If those things are within a reasonable distance, then so are jobs (well, as about as much as "normal" at least).
I think something important to consider as well is quality of basic services. I've been permanently remote since 2015, and I've moved three times since then. But as a remote worker, I spend most my time in my home and that means it needs high quality water, high quality air, high quality internet, and high quality electrical services. If I cannot get all of these, it's a non-starter. I have absolutely zero faith in getting all of these services of sufficiently high quality for the majority of homes listed on this site, and in many cases I would expect /none/ of these services to be sufficiently high quality. Most of these houses are located in places I would never live, they are essentially negative value locations (in very real terms, not just monetarily).
All that said, I live in one of the lowest cost of living major metros in the US, and I bought a house in an acceptably decent neighborhood w/ high quality water, electrical, and air, and 5 gigabit symmetric fiber service for under $300k. You don't need to spend millions to find an acceptable place to live when you work remotely, but that doesn't mean you want to live in a HUD foreclosure in some of the worst most blighted neighborhoods in the country where you can't rely on even basic services and are going to be immediately a target of violent crime.
Also, IME, places with no employers tend to be populated primarily by addicts, disability fraudsters, and other criminals.
...or the elderly, retired, legitimately disabled, or just people temporarily down on their luck.
I get what you're saying and I see that how my comment could be interpreted. I wish I had worded it better.
The most vibrant places in the world (again, IME) have a diversity of abilities, backgrounds, ages, and economic status.
There's another type of place - the sort of place I had in mind - that doesn't. That attracts people who are trying to get away from law and any sort of social contract. Some of those places look attractive on the surface. That's the sort of place I'm talking about. They're probably not as common as they seem to be to me.
Neither of which tends to lend itself to an interesting place to live.
> Not simply "don't want to live here", usually also "can't, there are no opportunities for income here".
also likely very underdeveloped infra
Peter Santenello does a great job of this.
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.
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.
I feel like any statement with "surely all they have to do" is going to miss some nuance.
In this particular case the apartment is owned by the coop (that's how coops work) and the mortgage is for the shares in the coop. So maybe more complex than a basic foreclosure where it might possibly work more like you'd think.
I think the broader point is if real estate is selling well below what is you would expect, there's a reason for that.
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.
Well, yes, I have in fact always dreamed of owning an abandoned house in Flint, MI
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.
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...
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.
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.
Correct, there are about 3,000 real estate listings right now on the main site: https://govauctions.app/feed?category=real-estate
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.
Apologies, clicking on the dot should also take you to the listing.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
The real truth is that "cream-top" or non-homogenized milk is way, way better and may not be as harmful to our health, and cream-top milk is perfectly legitimate, legal, and sold by ordinary farmer's markets in my area.
Pasteurization is a very necessary process if any community expects to transport and distribute milk past a radius where a teenage girl could carry a pail, basically. I see nothing wrong with pasteurized milk and I also avoid "raw milk" because it's a red herring of a fad, and those who defiantly purchase and consume raw milk are reckless and ignorant people.
But if you've never sampled cream-top milk, then you've not lived. It is absolutely a revelation. I love opening up a glass bottle of milk from Straus Family Creamery and then using a fork to dislodge the thick cap of cream in the neck of the bottle. You can dredge it all out and then use it in your coffee or tea later. I just enjoy when it melts in my mouth.
Of course, cream-top milk is rather "chunky" and can be unsightly: homogenization was developed partly to mollify housewives and make milk more conveniently pourable from a bottle. In fact, the homogenization processes today remove all the milkfat and then that cream can either be used in creamery products, or the cream can be added back in later to satisfy a target percentage, like 1% or 2% as milk is most commonly sold.
Fat in milk and other foods contributes to the satiety factor: you can eat rice-cakes or soybeans all day and not feel full, until you put some butter or oil on them, and then you feel satisfied. If I drink skim milk then I've got some hydration, but I don't enjoy it. If I drink/chew on a glass of cream-top milk, then I've been transported very near to Cowherds Heaven, and I feel extremely satisfied with the investment.
The USDA and FDA and powers that be told us that milkfat is bad for us because they were commercially motivated to say so. Milkfat is the most lovely part of milk but also the most versatile, and can be used in many nutritious ways, and that's why dairy farmers want rank-and-file consumers to demand less milkfat and drink 1% milk, so that the more lucrative milkfats and cream can be siphoned off for use in more profitable products.
> 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.
An HOA is, by definition, your ordinary neighbors. And by the principles of “small government” and subsidiarity, the HOA is tasked with establishing rules and guidelines that help make good neighbors live in harmony, such as uniform aesthetics, prohibited activities, and so forth. These rules are otherwise handled by landlords or municipal codes.
It is really about conformity and keeping the peace, so that the Clark Griswolds and Gladys Kravitzes of the world cannot run roughshod over the others.
Mixed-use zoning is perfectly cromulent, but I am not referring to mixed-usedl zoning. These are large SFH residences with ample lots in suburban developments.
This sort of entrepreneurship is fine if you’re a web designer, or traveling electrician, but many times they instead flout all kinds of boundaries such as carrying the proper business licenses, parking/disabled accessibility, insurance, signage etc.
Americans in suburban and residential areas have a certain expectation that their neighborhoods should be free of obvious commercial enterprises, because that is why we invented strip malls!
> And by the principles of “small government” and subsidiarity, the HOA is tasked with establishing rules and guidelines that help make good neighbors live in harmony, such as uniform aesthetics, prohibited activities, and so forth. These rules are otherwise handled by landlords or municipal codes.
The trouble here is that the principle of subsidiarity doesn't lead to the HOA making these decisions from both ends.
For many of them the HOA isn't local enough and the decision should be up to the individual property owners, e.g. they should have nothing to say about you putting solar panels on your roof or operating a business that isn't meaningfully disruptive to the neighbors.
For the others, the rules have regional/national implications for things like housing affordability and small business viability and the HOA is subject to perverse incentives. Each suburb wants a different one to host the strip mall, with the result that there is an insufficiency of land zoned for dense construction and mixed use, and then it requires a higher level of government to act because too many of the local ones refuse to allow any at all.
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.
Then you watch Downton Abbey and learn that upkeep on a hundreds years old castle on that estate will bury you.
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 :)
> Search all government auctions in one place, *know what they're worth before you bid*
So the blog post contradicts the entire premise of the site.
This is just an ad for their valuation service.
Real estate specifically is very hard to "value" sight unseen from a bidding perspective. The post I shared - with the information on what to look out for as well as possible additional costs - is part of helping people to understand what to bid.
Haha, not a single dot in my state. Guess I'm moving to Illinois!
Edit: "Time Left NaNm", guess I should be quick.
Tempting if looking to build a new workshop or garage. Tear it down, and build from scratch.
Thanks for this. Tip jar?
Appreciate it, but no need - happy you found it interesting. If you end up buying one of these, let me know!
Let us count the excuses in the thread:
>back taxes
>asbestos
>shit hole places
>something wrong with it
>needs work
>jobs
>demand better of yourself
Love the last one. I'm reminded of an article I read yesterday, where the author complains about how all the affordable housing was built in low income areas! "Oh no! They built the affordable housing where the people who need it are at!! NOOO!"
https://citylimits.org/where-the-most-affordable-apartments-...
AKA where not to buy a home.
A lot of these houses probably come with massive debt attached, so really buying any of these homes is a ripoff, even if you just wanted them for the land. You will owe way more than what you paid. This website would be more interesting if it actually showed you the true cost. As it stands, it’s clickbait.
>As it stands, it’s clickbait.
check the big "What you need to know before you buy" section.
Yes, that doesn’t mean it isn’t clickbait.
The prices shown are worthless, you’d have to check what debt any property actually has to determine what you need to put down. That $3k flint house, you will pay $200k+ when all is said and done.
The low prices are nothing more than an interesting hook.
On the contrary, this is a great starting point for OP to enhance the app to crawl (if needed) to determine fully loaded costs required to acquire. Liens and other encumbrances are typically public record, demo costs can be estimate by zip code if you don't want to programmatically reach out to demo vendors for a quote.
Where are you finding the lien on that property? I don't see it listed at all.
Edit: I'm asking how you came up with the $200k+ figure
they aggregate and display information exactly as provided by the various databases, and then make it clear what has been included and what hasn't been included in that price. there is nothing misleading.
it's a real stretch to call that clickbait, even starting from the already-stretched definition of clickbait common on HN.
I’m not sure this is clickbait in a literal sense, but given the factors you point out, it could promote misunderstandings among casual readers.
Downvoted for breaking this guideline: "Don't be curmudgeonly. Thoughtful criticism is fine, but please don't be rigidly or generically negative."
The "It's clickbait" comment at the end made me feel pain for the site buider, and I didn't even put any work into the website. They made a thing and put it out in the world. Some people like it: as evidenced by other comments here.
That they mention the top of the price range instead of the bottom lends a lot of credibility to my mind.
I do not feel pain for builders anymore. Most of these projects are just AI prompted outputs. We can criticize much more sharply, as the effort spent is lower.