what's the deal with houses listed for $200

Parent Cafe
1

<p>Is this for real? Should I even contact the listing agent? Can I assume that’s the expected monthly payment rather than the selling price? It is a 2 bedroom 1.5 bathroom single family house.</p>

2

<p>It might be a rental. Sometimes those will show up when you do a search “to buy”…</p>

3

<p>I’m thinking you missed the K</p>

4

<p>In what state is the house located?</p>

5

<p>Does the the property description mention “superfund”?</p>

6

<p>I was thinking Chinese dry wall.</p>

7

<p>Or “chemical manufacturing site”, i.e. “meth lab” :)</p>

<p>Sometimes, the house is for sale, but not the lot. There could be a time frame given for the buyer to move/remove the structure.</p>

<p>Our realtor once bought a chunk of prime acreage with a large house for pennies on the dollar. The appraisal of the house came in at $1K - there was that much salvageable material in there. The realtor paid close to $50K for cleanup and demolition, but the land was worth it. You should have seen pics of the cluttered living room complete with mummified rats hanging from the hole in the ceiling drywall. Or the 7 water heaters - when one died, the hoarder owner never disposed of it and just asked the plumbers to install the new one next to it and so on :D</p>

<p>Without knowing all details, it is hard to say “what’s the deal with houses listed for $200”. :)</p>

8

<p>It turns out that a lot of RE agents are really bad at using computers, even for really simple things like data entry.</p>

<p>My DW sees stuff like this all the time, it is almost certainly a typo.</p>

<p>A slightly devious agent might do this on purpose to catch more eyeballs, a lot of people build their screening filters based on price.</p>

<p>As cnp55 said, it could be a rental, they get mixed in with sales listings sometimes (that data entry thing again), but $200 for a whole house would be absurdly low, at least in my neck of the woods.</p>

9

<p>There were some houses for sale in that price range, such as in Detroit. I have seen some were offered for $1, those might have some strings attach to it. Such as you have to renovate the “shell” with a lot of money or level it to build new ones with a time limit. You may not have the chance to sell the lot without a descent improvement on it.</p>